Our Philosophy
I’ve been designing gardens for the past 21 years now and time and again, I’ve seen the same mistake made.
People spend a lot of money on their garden but then find that they don’t have enough time to look after it, resulting in an untidy mess. It’s a common error to assume that the whole garden has to be a low maintenance one in order to cope but what I’ve learnt, from experience, is that the time it requires to look after the garden you have, however much that is, must equal the time you have to look after it – and that varies from person to person, circumstance to circumstance.
When this equation is out of balance, the garden becomes a burden and a source of stress, which is something to be avoided, given the chance.
When the equation is balanced, you will enjoy being in the garden, the investment of creating it is not wasted and the garden itself is a delightful place to be in.
All that starts with the right design based on what I call the 3 Foundations and you will begin to notice that all beautiful gardens are based on these foundations.
- Know what you want to do or have in the garden.
- Identify and work with the conditions that already exist in the garden.
- Think about all maintenance implications before implementing anything.
Get these right and your garden will be a delight for years to come. If you’d like to learn more about our approach, give us a ring or read my book ‘The Garden Equation. How to make your garden a delightful part of your lifestyle’.
Who I am
Sally Tierney MSGD, BSc (Hons)
Sally has been designing gardens for 21 years and is a Registered Member of the Society of Garden Designers, and a registered Designer with the British Association of Landscape Industries (BALI)
She trained at Askham Bryan College, York and left there with an HND in Horticulture and and BSc (Hons) in Landscape Management from the University of Leeds.
Since leaving college, Sally worked for English Heritage in the gardens at Belsay, Northumberland, with Leeds City Council at their Red Hall site and then for her own clients since 1997.
