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This contemporary garden is the ultimate family retreat — thoughtfully designed to balance style, functionality, and ease. Built for hosting up to 15 guests, the layout centres around a sleek, fully-equipped outdoor kitchen perfect for pizza nights and relaxed socialising. Durable hardscaping and low-maintenance planting keep upkeep minimal, while lush borders soften the clean lines with bursts of greenery and seasonal colour. A calming water feature not only adds visual interest but also masks nearby traffic, creating a peaceful atmosphere. Blending modern elegance with everyday practicality, this is an outdoor space made for living, gathering, and making lasting memories.

This contemporary garden in South Harrogate is a vibrant, biophilic retreat designed for year-round enjoyment. A striking feature wall sits behind the existing silver birch, enhancing its sculptural beauty and adding a bold pop of colour to the space. Elegant paving setts define the layout with crisp lines, while thermo-treated decking guides you on a journey through the garden. Lush, seasonal planting ensures continuous interest and sensory delight, reflective water features all creating a true feeling of wellness and connection to nature — a space the clients love and use in every season.

This Taylor Wimpey newbuild home needed the bland garden brought to life to match the house. The backdrop of the garden is gorgeous woodland so the garden needed to blend in with the natural surroundings and invite you to travel further through the space. Using a combination of materials, HGD designed a curved, block paved path to lead you through lush planting of multi-stem birch trees, hydrangeas and shade-loving shrubs for the top shaded garden area. The main porcelain patio area is framed by a pergola, creating a comfortable, relaxing space for the clients’ large garden sofa to sit. Our clients are keen gardeners and like to grow vegetables and fruit so we created an allotment feel in the bottom section of the garden with a stepping stone path and curved patio seating space for them to sit and enjoy their hard work.

This traditional yet contemporary style garden reflects the style of this newly built farmhouse. The large York stone paved area is divided into zones, inviting you to enjoy each area as you travel through the space. With a beautiful outdoor kitchen and green egg enclosed in the contemporary style cedar-clad summerhouse, the dining/relaxing space sits centrally and can be enjoyed into the evening with its stunning outdoor fireplace enclosing. The central water rill divides the space and creates a key focal point from the large oak framed window central to the house, catching your attention with both its beautiful sound and view from all areas of the garden. The corten steel ring sculptures punctuate the end of the flowing water rill and lead your eye to the furthest point of the garden, framing the view of the wider landscape. With a defined sunbathing area, three built-in gas outdoor firepits, and beautiful @talenti_outdoorliving furniture pieces throughout – this garden is something to behold. From a bland open lawn to an inviting outdoor space with everything a family of five could possibly need to entertain their family and friends. This space provides an amazing platform for exuberant parties and many years of happy memories for this lovely family.

Our latest transformation… A ‘Zen’ New-Build garden.. Caroline and Simon bought this Mulgrave new-build home on the south side of Harrogate in 2020. The garden was a typical, bland turfed space with a small patio area. The brief was to create a similar look to our 2021 ‘Escape your mind’ Show Garden with a relaxing feel. The black, zen pergola creates a key focal point, with a staggered, plank, steppingstone path enticing you into the relaxing zone. The Lignia wood bench and decking bring a beautiful, bright, wooden texture and grain detail into the space. Plentiful seating, a comfortable journey, natural materials, and lush greenery ensures this garden creates contemplation, rejuvenation, and relaxation and gives them and their friends a peaceful space to connect. Lucious planting of Salvia nemerosa ‘Caradonna’, Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’ Deschampsia cespitosa, Ilex crenata and Hemerocallis ‘Stella de Oro’ bring colour, form, and structure to the space. Acers add the Zen touch and a multi-stem Catalpa bignoniodes ‘Aurea’ tree to bring all-important screening and some wow factor.

This naturalistic garden is set to be a Spring 2023 build. The unique curved steps, stonewalling, cobbled sweeping paths, lavish drift planting, and overhanging pergola detailing should bring this garden totally alive . The clients’ wanted to ensure costs for moving earth/levels were kept a minimum, hence we have followed the natural terrain of the land and created inviting zones as you travel through the space. The cobbled paths lead you down the curved, rounded steps along to the dining/ lounging, framed outdoor room. A view of the steps and curved stone walls can be enjoyed from a hidden bench and from the central seating areas. Another level of long, curved steps then leads you onto the main lawn, creating a wonderful feeling of open space. This beautiful Victorian home is set to be transformed by this tranquil, inviting garden. We can’t wait to see this one start!

Covid-19 has proved an immensely difficult time for children, parents, grandparents, adults, business owners, families, and communities across the globe. The pandemic has touched us all somehow on a global scale. However, one thing that has stayed consistent is nature and the benefits nature can bring to our mental and physical wellbeing. Harrogate Garden Design believe in creating ‘little bits of heaven on earth’. Using Biophilic design principles, we design outdoor spaces that will benefit future generations both physically and mentally. We hope that our appreciation of nature and its healing benefits will continue way beyond this pandemic.

HGD created the ‘Escape your Mind’ garden to remind us of the positive effects we can all derive from nature. The garden includes elements that automatically and naturally calm our minds. These elements include well-connected space, healthy plant life, freshwater, natural materials and patterns, opportunities for contemplation, a feeling of refuge, and views across the open landscape. Effective biophilic design creates natural habitats that satisfy our innate need for contact with the natural world. Humans are known to feel more alive when we can feel and experience nature.

We were elated to pick up a ‘Gold’ Award for this garden!

The pathway through ‘Escape your Mind’ is inspired by the ‘New York Highline’ – a great example of good, biophilic design.

Biophilia (according to a theory of the biologist E. O. Wilson) = an innate and genetically determined affinity of human beings with the natural world.