I read this fabulous piece of news that hedgehog numbers are increasing in urban areas (although not as great news that rural numbers have still dropped.)Your average person’s knowledge of hedgehogs’ habitats has increased due to brilliant education around creating ‘hedgehog highways’ between urban gardens to allow hedgehogs to roam throughout the night.Hedgehogs can travel up to 12 miles per night, so our urban or suburban walls and fences make this really tricky for them. We always design in hedgehog highways into any fences, walls or boundaries that we design – these small factors can make a huge difference.Pictured is
Read MoreWhen it comes to garden design, planning should take place during the colder months to allow the greatest reward in terms of enjoying the garden during the hottest months of the year," says Michael John McGarr, director and garden designer at Warnes McGarr & Co.Spring is a season full of potential for both the plants about to spring to life in your garden, but also for homeowners to lay the seeds of their garden design planning ideas.The arrival of spring also means that summer is just around the corner, so take the time now to really think about how you want
Read MoreHouzz Awards 2019 - Warnes McGarr & Co. - Award Winning Landscape Design. Awarded by the community of over 40 million monthly users, annual BOH badge highlights home renovation & design professionals with Top ratings and most popular home designs "Warnes - McGarr & Co. of Wigan has won “Best Of Design ” on Houzz®, the leading platform for home renovation and design. The multi award winning landscape design and build company was chosen by the more than 40 million monthly unique users that comprise the Houzz community from among more than 2.1 million active home building, renovating and design industry professionals.The Best Of Houzz is
Read MoreBy Michael John McGarr Garden lighting in landscape design. Garden lighting in landscape design is extremely important and it is often an afterthought for most clients. However, we encourage them to think about lighting early on. In our British climate, our garden is viewed most of the year from the interior of the property so it is paramount that lighting is effective. This is particularly poignant in winter when shorter days render lighting the most effective feature within a garden.It always make me smile when clients use their garden lighting systems to wow guests at winter dinner parties. It never occurred to them that they would be
Read MoreBy Michael John McGarr Our niche within landscape design in 2019. Our niche within landscape design in 2019 has developed from our passion to create gardens that people can use all year round, as well as a continuing trend for outdoor living.We feel that a traditional lawned garden with flower beds around the edges is designed to be viewed through the window and perhaps mowed once a week in the summer to keep it looking spick and span. We can achieve so much more...[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="3600"] Outdoor living space and outdoor kitchen in a landscape design in 2019 by Warnes-McGarr &
Read More'The way we see it, our gardens don't belong to us alone – they belong to all the wildlife that lives there, eats there or even just uses them as a stopping off point,' says award-winning garden designer Michael John McGarr of Warnes McGarr & Co. 'This could involve the hedgehog that wanders through your garden at night, the birds that stop off in the thick shrubbery, right through to the beetles and woodlice that live under a stone at the end of the garden.'It doesn't take a huge amount of effort to ensure wildlife can flourish in your garden
Read MoreOne of our favourite trade mags, ProLandscaper, has put together a Manchester supplement for their April issue, which brilliantly features Warnes McGarr & Co landscape and garden designers not once but twice.Our upcoming work with the team at RHS Tatton to design and build The Poisonous Garden for their prestigious Cheshire garden and flower show in July has been featured. As we move into May, we are really ramping up the planning for this amazing huge exhibit!Our garden designer Michael John McGarr was also asked to contribute some thoughts for a feature about the Northern Forest that was announced this
Read MoreIf you were casually flicking through The Telegraph weekend gardening section over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend, you may have thought - I recognise that face! I recognise that garden full of cacti!Yes, we were featured in a double-page spread this weekend by fantastic garden writer Annie Gatti headlined: Six fresh faces in garden design - how will they change the world? Annie contacted us back in September last year for a chat after we won a gold medal at RHS Tatton 2017, so we've been keeping our eyes out ever since for the resulting feature.It was an honour to
Read MoreOur whole team was incredibly chuffed to receive the October issue of ProLandscaper and find a photo of our '2101' Cheshire show garden on the front cover.In this month's issue of the landscaping magazine, there is a three-page feature talking about the build of our Cactus Direct 2101 show garden, at RHS Tatton in July 2017.And then towards the end of the magazine is a book review by our lead garden designer Michael John McGarr who reviewed Dan Pearson's Natural Selection: A Year in the Garden book while he was on holiday.Make sure you read the October 2017 ProLandscaper.
Read MoreWhile at RHS Tatton in July this year exhibiting our multi award-winning garden, our garden designer Michael John McGarr was interviewed by Peter Donegan from The Sod Show.We were already aware of fellow garden designer Pete's brilliant podcasts, so were honoured to be chosen to be featured. Michael had a great chat with Pete about setting up his own consultancy, the pressures of following your own creative path and designing and building show gardens.Take a listen to The Sod Show podcast below and you can always drop them a line on Twitter @sodshow to let them know you enjoyed it.
Read MoreBy Michael John McGarrI was thrilled to be asked by INEX magazine to contribute a piece of editorial about garden design trends for 2017, and about the outdoor living spaces we create. We're always researching innovation within outdoor living, such as aquaponics or new materials such as HI-MACS® or Accoya, to use within our residential consultations or show gardens.The article was published in the March issue of INEX, which is an online magazine about interiors and exterior design.I'm always happy to put together editorial about garden and landscape design for a specialist publication about trends, materials and how they come
Read MoreWe are really pleased to be featured in February’s issue of Lancashire Life, with a feature about our chief creative and company founder Michael John McGarr. The interview by garden expert and photographer Linda Viney took place last summer so we’ve been eagerly awaiting the appearance of this feature.Linda came out to visit Michael at our new office and also at his own garden to chat about our show gardens, winning numerous awards, future plans and our business ethos. At the time, we had just begun our re-branding process and the new website was just being built so a lot
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