Garden design · Sevenoaks, Kent
I'm Dawn Wellbelove, and I design private gardens from Dunton Green, just outside Sevenoaks. Four clear stages take you from the first walk round your garden to a working plan your landscaper can build from — contemporary, low-maintenance, and planted so there is something doing its job in every month of the year.
The design process · four stagesMeeting · survey & two layouts · 3D model · working planYou get a costed quote after the first meeting, and you can stop at the end of any stage. See how it runs →
Four stages
5.0★
Third generation
Kent & London
The idea behind the practice
Nearly every garden I'm called out to is doing something — it's just not doing much for the people who own it. A lawn that gets mown and nothing else. A patio you'd sit on if there were anywhere decent to look at. Borders that were planted by whoever lived here in 1998 and have been slowly thinning out ever since.
My job is to work out what the space could be, and then draw it properly enough that someone can build it. I favour a contemporary, low-maintenance style with year-round structure, because a garden that asks for three hours every Saturday is a garden you end up resenting.
I work on my own. The person who walks your garden at the first meeting is the person drawing the layouts, building the 3D model, choosing the plants and handing the working plan to your landscaper. Nothing gets lost between people, because there is only one of me.
What I do
Some gardens need redrawing from the boundary in. Plenty only need the planting rethinking. I'll tell you honestly which of the two you've got, and quote for the work that's actually warranted.
01
Four stages from an informal meeting in your garden to a working plan your landscape gardener can build from.
02
For an uninspiring, under-used or awkwardly sloping garden that ought to be the calmest room in the house.
03
When the bones of the garden are right and it's the planting that has run out of ideas.
04
Species, quantities, spacings and positions — chosen for your soil and aspect, and priced properly before you buy.
05
The optional extra people wish they had taken — a garden you can still see from the kitchen at six o'clock in November.
06
The drawing that goes to the contractor, so the garden that gets built is the garden you agreed to.
How a design runs
Nothing is committed before it is written down and costed. Plenty of people take the concept plan and build the garden over several years — that is a perfectly sensible way to do it, as long as the whole thing was designed first.
01
We meet, walk the garden, and I assess what you've got. You get a costed quote for the design work before anything is agreed.
02
I survey the garden in detail and draw up two alternative layouts, so you're choosing between real options rather than reacting to one.
03
Your chosen layout is modelled in 3D so you can see it from the angles you'll really use, then revised until the concept plan is right.
04
You get a working plan for your landscape gardener to build from, with a bespoke planting plan and lighting plan if you'd like them.
From the portfolio
A coastal brief is really a planting brief. Wind, salt and thin, fast-draining ground rule out a long list of the obvious choices, so the scheme is built from things that genuinely want to live there — tough evergreen structure, silvers and greys, grasses that move rather than break. Get that right and the garden looks deliberate in January, not just in July.
A planting-only commission for a London garden: the layout stays as it is, and the work goes into what grows in it. Town gardens are shade, reflected heat, dry soil at the base of walls and neighbours on three sides, so the plan leans on structure, layered height for privacy and a restricted palette — a small space reads as calm when it isn't asked to do six things at once.
Small gardens reward being designed hardest. Every surface is on show, every boundary is close, and there is nowhere to hide a bad decision. The approach is to treat the courtyard as a room: one good material underfoot, boundaries planted out of sight, generous pots rather than a scatter of small ones, and a single thing worth looking at from indoors.
Designing around a dog is a proper design constraint, not an afterthought. It means routes the dog will take anyway being given a surface rather than a worn stripe of mud, planting robust enough to be brushed past, no borders that reward a dig, and a lawn specified so it survives being used. Do it deliberately and the garden looks better, not worse.
Vegetable and herb beds with flowering planting woven through them — productive, but designed to be looked at rather than hidden behind a screen at the bottom of the garden. Bed widths are set by arm's reach, paths by a wheelbarrow, and the ornamental planting does the work of making it feel like a garden rather than an allotment.
Some gardens start from an idea rather than a plan. This one takes its name and its thread from a piece of imagery the clients cared about, and the design carries it through in materials and planting instead of announcing it with an ornament. A garden built on something personal tends to be the one that gets used every day.
In their words
A small practice, so these are real clients rather than a wall of testimonials. Reviews are pulled live from Dawn's Google profile.
“Dawn has designed a beautiful cottage-style garden for us. It contains vegetable & herb beds with lots of flowering plants in between… She listened to what we wanted and came up with an amazing and imaginative design… She is also very good at finding practical solutions to problems. Dawn is very…”
“I loved working with Dawn. She was so accommodating, clear and generous in her approach to designing the planting scheme for our garden… communication, cleanliness during time on site, professionalism and service were all faultless so I'd rate 10/10… how willing Dawn was to work towards our budget…”
Where I work
Home and studio are in Dunton Green, a couple of minutes from Sevenoaks, and most of my work sits within easy reach: Riverhead, Otford, Kemsing, Chipstead, Shoreham, Westerham, Tonbridge and the villages in between. I also take projects in London — one of the schemes in my portfolio is a London planting scheme. If you're not sure whether you're in reach, just ask.
Thinking about your garden?
Call Dawn, or send a few details and she'll come back to you. Monday to Friday, 9am – 2.30pm.
