Low-maintenance garden design- experiments, developments and lessons in outdoor living.

by Michael John McGarr The first question that many clients ask me on that very first consultation meeting is can I design a beautiful garden that will stay beautiful? How do I create a high-spec luxury outdoor living space that is really and truly low maintenance? My contemporary outdoor living spaces are actually naturally low-maintenance. I would not design a stunning space and then tell you that the huge lawn needs mowing twice a week and you need to hand-weed dandelions out of it (who could be bothered to do that?!). I won't leave you with swathes of bedding plants that need to

• Categories: Advice and tips, Business news, ecological garden design, ecological landscape design, ecology, Garden design, innovation, Lancashire, landscape architecture, Landscape design, Manchester, Michael John McGarr, Outdoor kitchens, Residential garden, sustainable garden design, wildlife
• November 29th 2019

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Landscape Design Survey for Wildlife.

By Michael John McGarr A landscape design survey for wildlife shouldn't just be an exercise in measuring the site backwards and forwards, anyone with a laser level can accurately achieve this task. The key to creating a garden design that is beneficial to wildlife is to understand the current site conditions on a deeper level. More often than not wildlife is abundant on sites that have either been neglected or mismanaged for any length of time. Ironically the biggest danger to existing wildlife is the potential threat of further construction and development.  The onus is then on the landscape designer to cushion the effects

• Categories: ecological garden design, ecological landscape design, ecology, sustainable garden design, sustainable garden design., wildlife
• May 9th 2019

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New Ideas : New Materials in Landscape Architecture.

So it begins! It was great to get on the "big train to the big smoke" on Monday.  As I dragged my suitcase through the streets of Wigan towards the train station, my usual penchant for garden design observation kicked in.  I began to take in the good, and not so good gardens and landscape architecture within the public spaces around town.  I needn't have been too concerned with this, as what lay in store for me was something far more exciting. The London College of Garden Design are hosting the "Spring Info Burst : New Ideas : New materials"  

• Categories: Architecture, Bolton, british stone, Cheshire, Garden design, Housebuilding, innovation, Lancashire, landscape architecture, Landscape design, london, Michael John McGarr, Uncategorised
• February 14th 2019

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Houzz awards 2019 – Award Winning Landscape Design.

Houzz 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

• Categories: Advice and tips, Architecture, Awards, Bolton, Business news, Cheshire, Garden design, garden lighting, Housebuilding, Lancashire, landscape architecture, Landscape design, Manchester, Michael John McGarr, Outdoor kitchens, Press coverage, rain gardens, Residential garden, RHS Tatton, Robert Warnes, Show gardens, sketchup, Sponsorship, Uncategorised, Wigan
• February 4th 2019

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5 ways to include wildlife in your garden design.

'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

• Categories: Advice and tips, Architecture, Awards, Bolton, Business news, Cheshire, Garden design, Housebuilding, Lancashire, landscape architecture, Landscape design, Manchester, Michael John McGarr, Outdoor kitchens, Press coverage, rain gardens, Residential garden, Wigan
• December 19th 2018

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More awards from Houzz

2018 has got off to a busy start for our team here at Warnes McGarr & Co. Not only have we just announced our design project for RHS Tatton - The Poisonous Garden - we're incredibly busy working on residential garden designs right across Lancashire, Bolton and Wigan and Cheshire at the moment. On top of that, we've also been awarded TWO awards in the Best of Houzz 2018. We won one award for Best of Houzz Design and another for Best of Houzz Service. The Design award reflects the quality of our work and the images that we've uploaded to our

• Categories: Awards, Bolton, Business news, Cheshire, Garden design, Lancashire, Michael John McGarr, Wigan
• March 7th 2018

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Garden designer Michael John McGarr featured in Lancashire Life

We 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

• Categories: Business news, Garden design, Lancashire, Press coverage, Wigan
• January 31st 2017

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We’ve been shortlisted for the APL awards!

Here at Warnes McGarr & Co, we are incredibly pleased to have been shortlisted for the APL awards 2017, in the hard landscaping category. The Association of Professional Landscapers (APL) is our gardening and landscaping industry body, so any award or recognition from them is a great accolade for our fast-growing garden design and landscape business. At last year’s award ceremony, we were awarded a commendation in the ‘Gardens under £20,000’ category for a fabulous garden we designed and landscaped in Wigan, Lancashire. We were massively pleased with the garden design we submitted for the 2017 awards – and luckily so were our

• Categories: Awards, Garden design, Lancashire, Landscape design, Manchester, Michael John McGarr, Residential garden, Wigan
• November 9th 2016

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New branding and direction for our garden design business

After a lot of thinking about growth and where we want to go with our work, we made the decision to re-brand our garden design business name, our logo and our website to reflect our new direction. Having previously been called MJM Landscape for our domestic work and Living Space for our show garden work, we decided that we needed one name to cover all our garden design work and consultancy. Our head of construction Robert Warnes had become a business partner of company founder and designer Michael McGarr a while back, but now the partnership has been formalised with our new

• Categories: Business news
• September 15th 2016

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