People usually imagine the build is the decision. It is not — the design stage is where every pound of the build is spent, on paper, where changes are free. Here is how a Conway project actually runs, from the first phone call to the last plant in the ground.
It starts with a first visit. Free, about an hour, usually with tea. We walk the garden with you and mostly listen: how you live now, how you want to live outside, what the children need, where the sun lands at six in the evening, what you want to look at from the kitchen window and what you would rather not see. Then we look at the things you cannot see from the patio chairs — levels, drainage, soil, boundaries, access — and leave you with an honest written note on what a design and build would involve. No obligation; roughly half the gardens we visit do not become projects that year, and that is fine.
If you decide to proceed, the next step is the survey. We measure the garden properly — levels with a laser, boundaries, tree positions, the house's thresholds — because every later decision hangs on this drawing being right. On larger or more complex plots around Hertford and its hillside villages, this stage alone takes days, and it is worth every one of them.
Then comes the concept: a clear layout of terraces, paths, levels, structure and planting structure, presented as plans and 3D views so you can stand in the garden before it exists. This is the conversation stage — the scheme is presented, you live with it for a week, we revise. Most projects need one or two rounds. The concept fixes where things go; the detail stage fixes what they are made of.
The full design package follows: construction details a builder can build from, a planting plan with schedules and plant sizes, a specification, and — where the address needs it — any consent applications. Because we design and build, the drawings are drawn to be built: steps dimensioned for real feet, falls set for real water, planting for real soil.
Then the build. You get a programme at quote stage and one point of contact on site — a lead who runs the groundworks, the hard landscaping, the structures and the planting with our own teams. The first fortnight is the least photogenic and the most important: excavation, sub-base, drainage. On Harlow clay or the heavy soils of the Hertfordshire clay belt, this is where gardens are won. Then the garden assembles fast: base courses, paving, walls, levels, and finally the soft stuff — soil improvement, planting, lawn.
The end is not a van leaving. It is a walkthrough: how the drainage works, how the lighting zones are switched, what each plant will do in five years, and what the garden needs from you in its first two seasons. You also get a plan of what is buried under the lawn — which sounds like paperwork until the day you need it.
How long does all of it take? Design typically runs four to eight weeks from survey to full package. Builds run from two or three weeks for terraces and borders to ten to sixteen for full garden rebuilds. Consent, where needed, runs on the council's clock and is built into the programme rather than discovered by it.
And the cost question is answered honestly at every stage: the design fees are quoted before drawing begins, and the build is priced from the finished design — so the number you approve matches the garden you approved. That is what design and build actually buys you: one company, accountable for the drawing and the ground it stands on.
If any of that sounds like the garden you want, the first step is the easiest: a first visit. It costs nothing and commits you to nothing. Read more about our approach to garden design or our construction method in the meantime.