What garden designers put in their own gardens is perhaps more revealing than what they create for their clients, who generally have extensive land, and expansive budgets. In their own homes,  garden designers are often, like most of us, constrained by limited time and resources. But they have time to think, sometimes for many years, about any intervention—and time to experiment and innovate.

In my new book Wonderlands: British Garden Designers at Home, I trace the close relationship between the personal spaces and professional projects of 18 of the country’s leading landscape architects. Some of the gardens are life-long projects made over decades; many others are young gardens started only in the last few years, yet already sitting harmoniously in their settings. All of the gardens showcase the very best selections of plants—that goes without saying. And no matter the size or budget, there are takeaways for every gardener, even those working with far more modest plots.

Photography by Eva Nemeth.

Make a mini meadow.

In large country gardens there’s plenty of space to experiment, but in one area of Libby Russell’s romantic and abundant Somerset garden she shows how to create a bucolic snapshot that could work in almost any space, town, or country. A rectangular bed, four meters long by two meters wide, filled with airy white daisies. Like everywhere else in the garden, this patch is orchestrated for a year-round view, starting with snowdrops in late winter, then black and white fritillaries, white alliums, and summer wildflowers including Succisa pratensis, which will bring structure until the end of the year. “This is no-gardening gardening,” says Libby. “And I think it’s my favorite bed in the whole garden. You don’t have to have a big area to have something that’s special.”

Create immersive views in the city.

Emily Erlam’s plot is typical of many English town or city gardens: a long rectangle that’s sandwiched between her neighbors. Using the spoil created from digging down to create a basement kitchen, she built a series of four terraces up through the garden, and then gave each area a different mood and planting scheme. “I’m very focused on feeling,” says the designer on a garden’s ability to spark an emotional response. “And with plants we can create a sense of drama quite quickly.” In the lowest terrace right outside her kitchen, she makes the most of the floor-to-ceiling glass walls with an immersive jungle of evergreen plants and flowering shrubs. Fans of Fatsia japonica, clipped Choisya x dewitteana ‘Aztec Pearl’, Pittosporum tenuifolium ‘Golf Ball’, and the velvety pale green, felted leaves of Ballota pseudodictamnus contrast with cloud-pruned cinnamon-barked myrtle and the creamy pink rose ‘Pierre de Ronsard’.

Harness the borrowed landscape.

Sheila Jack’s rural garden isn’t particularly large, and it was made on the site of an old concrete farmyard. But she harnesses every aspect of the surrounding fields. The main axis of the garden is designed around a gorgeous oak tree that lies further down her lane. But by focussing the eye on the mature tree it becomes part of the garden, bringing strong structure in all seasons and providing a backdrop to her colorful planting.

Create reflections.

Adding water features amplifies the visual effect of plants and draws in the sky, too; even a simple water bowl can have this effect. In 2007 Tom Stuart-Smith reused the long Corten steel wall and water tanks from his arresting 2006 gold medal-winning garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show to design an inner courtyard next to his converted barn. Around the reflective tanks, he planted Astrantia, Salvia, and sedums with metallic Eryngium, acid Euphorbia, and textural grasses providing contrast. Above it all Genista aetnensis—the Mount Etna broom— produces great weeping sprays of intense yellow flowers in high summer.

For harmonious gardens, restrict the palette.

A singular focus ripples through Dan Pearson’s gardens, which are characterized by exceptional plantsmanship: an innate sensitivity to the natural world and an uncompromising approach to design that somehow never feels overbaked. In his own Somerset garden, Hillside, the challenge was to create gardens that would sit seamlessly in the epic landscape that surrounds his farmhouse. Two acres of cultivated areas stretch out from either side of the house, with expansive ornamental borders sloping down to the east, segueing gently into the hills beyond. On the opposite side of the house the kitchen garden—one of the few flat spaces here, created using earth borrowed from land above—leads to the farm’s original barns, which are made from a rough patchwork of rusted corrugated panels. In pockets of planting close to the house, he keeps the mood calm and understated by restricting the palette to soft yellows and purples with evening primrose, foxgloves, verbena, and thalictrum.

Clothe the walls.

For plant obsessives no space is wasted. At the idyllic Welsh cottage of Harry Rich, lime rendered walls are first protected with a lattice of sturdy hazel poles and then shrouded in roses including ‘Cécile Brünner’ on the west-facing aspect of the house. The property, which is immersed in dense woodland, is then further submerged in planting so that it almost disappears into the atmospheric garden.

Add carefully crafted details.

When Miranda Brooks bought her farm in the Cotswolds, it had been a hardworking dairy farm for generations. Not only did she have to create a garden and landscape from a blank canvas of pasture, she had to carefully place her garden in and around the old stone farmhouse and outbuildings. Beautiful, handcrafted details and considered materials make the garden feel perfectly at ease in the space. Here the wooden gates into the walled kitchen garden have been handcrafted by her architect husband Bastien Halard with beautiful scalloped borders that add an idiosyncratic flourish to a functional design.

Maximize every space.

Designer and writer Mary Keen downsized from a large country garden to a town garden in 2017. One of the many clever ideas employed in her young garden is a walk-through greenhouse, an idea plucked from Parham House and Burford Priory, where she had previously made a garden for private clients. The path leads through the greenhouse, creating another view through the garden but also provides an opportunity for smaller displays of pots and specimen plants.

See also:

• The Editors’ Cut: 11 Finds for the Romantic Cottage Garden
• ‘The New Romantic Garden’: 6 Ideas to Try From Landscape Designer Jo Thompson’s Latest Book
• Quick Takes With: Dan Pearson