Samantha Willis Garden Design

Garden Design in Bampton

The village of Bampton is a gorgeous village with a beautiful church and stunning houses and cottages in the honey toned Cotswold stone. The front of the houses are dripping with Wisteria at this time of year.

We’ve been working in Bampton and it’s always fun to learn a litle about the place. Cotswolds Tourism says Bampton was mentioned in the Doomsday book dating back to 1086.
It was also part of the filming for Downton Abbey a series I loved. How many scenes were there by this church with Mary pouring her heart out.

When I’m not enjoying Downton Abbey I’m a garden designer with 15+ years experience.

If you’re looking for a little garden inspiration please call and we can help you get the garden you want. Sam is a local award winning garden desiger with 15+ years experience working in the oxfordshire and Cotswolds. We develop gardens from small courtyard gardens to large country houses.

If you’re looking for a garden design in Bampton or around Chipping Norton please don’t hesitate to contact us for an informal chat to see what you need.

We can help with
Border Design – simply updating your existing borders
Garden Design – a complete review of the garden
Landscaping – turning the vision into reality
Maintenance – to keep the garden looking lovely

Please don’t hesitate to call

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Creating Beautiful Summer Borders in Oxfordshire and Surrounding Areas

Spring has started with the plants coming into leaf and leaping out of the ground. Now is the time to start sitting and enjoying the garden.
Creating a Beautiful summer border consider the colour scheme that you’d like to include. If you have a shady garden pale colours will lighten up the area. Sunny Borders can cope with hot colours such as vibrant yellow and oranges. The sunny border can include blue, pink and white reflecting the poem by Siegfield Sasson where he wanted to enjoy the English garden.

It is always good to bring harmony into the garden with repeat planting. If you look in the countryside around you in the Cotswolds you will notice the same plants. This harmony is soothing to the eye and this can be repeated in the garden. Remember less is more and creating harmony rather than adddin more plants will be pleasing to the eye.

Before you start your create your summer border ensure you prepare the border dig through the soil and remove weeds
Once planted the plants will need watering and weeding

We can help you create and plan a summer border and will provide maintenance if you need assistance please contact us .

Creating Beautiful Summer Borders

Plant of the Month April

Known as Bleeding Heart due to it’s lovely heart shaped flowers. One of the first herbaceous plants to flower in April. It doesn’t just come with pink heart shaped flowers but also white and red. The latin name is Lamprocapnos spectabilis (formerly Dicentra spectabilis).

Fun Fact why do plants have latin names? Plants have Latin names for a universal, precise, and unambiguous way to identify and classify them. There are no variations to the latin definitions. Although we do of course have our own country names for plants the latin names are known and understood by all plantsmen.

Bleeding Heart

If you’d like some help with your borders to have all year round colour not just for the Plant of the Month please don’t hesitate to contact us

Garden Border Design

We offer Garden Border Design.Sometimes you don’t need a complete redesign of your garden but your borders need tidying. We can offer this.
Herbaceous plants might have got too woody and need dividing. Your shrubs may have taken over a little and need pruning. There may be gaps in the borders.

We come and review what is already in your garden and how to improve your garden border. We listen to what you want in your garden and take a brief.
Then we review what tasks are needed to rebalance the garden.

Garden design isn’t all about starting afresh but working with what is already in the garden. Buddleja area often thugs in the garden but area beautiful shrubs that attract insects. They can tolerate a really hard prune which bring the flowers back to eye level. A chance to stare at butterflies in the garden in the summer months, how enjoyable.

Border Design

In all stages of the garden we liaise with you and agree what are the next steps. We can create a garden plan for you to execute the next steps at certain times of the year or create the borders you want. So if you’re looking for a garden design in oxfordshire or surrounding counties please don’t hesitate to contat us.

Gardens do need some love and attention. Once the area is planted shrubs need pruning at different times of the year. Herbaceous plants need cutting back in the winter. We can also help with maintenance advice.

Please contact us to discuss what you’d like in your garden

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Garden Ideas for a Shade Garden

Not all plants thrive in the same location. On holiday in the Meditteranean you see lavender and rosemary enjoying the sunshine. These plants will not thrive in any location, they will not be happy in the shade. They revel in the sun of the mediterranean.

There are beautiful plants that do enjoy the shade and give off beautiful scents. Here are some garden ideas for a Shade in the Winter

Garden Ideas for Shade
Daphne Aumarginata is a lovely evergreen shade shrub and provides a beautiful scent in the winter months.
Sarcocca confuxa the Christmas Box is a fantastic plant for semi shade. It can be a hedge or a single shrub and the beautiful honey scent is delightful when planted near a door.

A larger shrub is Winter Sweet Chimoneanthus praecox. Chimonanthus literally means winter flower in Greek. This shrub can grow to be quite large so plant carefully. It is a good back of the border plant. If however you can plant it back of the border near an area that you will walk past you will be delighted. On sunny days in the cold winter months you will enjoy the the delightul fragrance. The scent is a sweet spicy scent and it is surprising that the smell comes from such small flowers.

For some smaller ground cover plants the Helleborus orientalis is delightful and if you remove the leaves the flowers look increadible this time of the year. If you live near Woodstock a local nursery has some lovely Hellebores Bunkers Hill

If you are looking for some garden ideas for a Shade Garden please feel free to contact us

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A New House in Oxfordshire – A New Garden

Is exciting to move into a new house. A New House in Oxfordshire is a chance to create the garden you want.

We created a garden for this beautiful house in Woodstock on the new Blenheim Estate Park View

We extended the patio matching the paving to the existing paving to enable more space for sitting out and relaxing in the garden.

We created the beautiful borders by removing some of the lawn area. This also makes it easier to mow with borders against the wall and fence panels. If you have a New Garden to design you can choose all the plants you want and the colours you like. A New Garden provides the opportunity to work with a Garden Designer and create the garden you want.
As a garden designer we will consider providing all year round interest with shrubs, trees, and herbaceous plant.

The beautiful Cotswold stone wall we uplight with some Collingwood lights.

This is also an opportunity to consider lighting in your garden lighting paths to creating features in your garden. In this instance we uplight the beautiful Cotswolds stone wall.

If you have a new garden and need some help with your garden design in Oxfordshire please don’t hestiate to give us a call.Contact 0771 858 6105

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Garden Ideas Small Courtyard Garden

What do you do with a paved garden. Some small courtyard gardens are often all paved but you don’t have to suffer with no planting in the garden.
I designed a garden in Woodstock a few years ago and we maintained the existing paving but cut into it to create a country style garden affect and also improved the drainage.

We even created a small raised bed at the bottom of the garden providing seating and interest. We ensured that we removed the paving and didn’t build ontop of the paving to improve drainage. So your small courtyard garden can be interesting and not just a depressing paved area. If you need some design inspiration from a Garden Designer Cotswolds please contact us. We design and work with the landscapers to deliver the garden you want.

Gardeners Question time was asked this very question. BBC Gardeners’ Question Time

If you need help with you garden whether a small courtyard garden or large country house in Cotswolds please contact us for an informal chat.

Small Courtyard Garden Design ideas

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Garden Designer Oxfordshire

From large country houses to small coutryard gardens we have been designing and building gardens in the Oxfordshire.

The Cotswolds and Oxfordshire has a number of beautiful houses to inspire you and one that is an inspiration for shady garden is Rousham. Who said shady gardens are difficult to design. This garden was originally designed by William Kent(1685-1748). One of the most celebrated designers of the landscape movement. This movement moved away from formality and and focused more on being in harmony with nature, using paths and vistas to take you to desitnations or lead your eye to the horizon

Whilst is might be dark and gloomy outside it will soon be the shortest day and then days get longer and we head towards the summer. So if you’re looking for some inspiration from a Garden Designer Oxfordshire please don’t hesitate to contact us. Whilst it is rather dull at the moment it will soon be the shortest day and we’ll be out in the garden again.

For a little inspiration here is an idea.

Hellebores Plant of the month

So if you’re looking for some garden inspiration from a Garden Designer in the Oxfordshire why not contact us.

Garden Designer Cotswolds

Oak Pergola Cotswolds

From large country houses to small coutryard gardens we have been designing and building gardens in the Cotswolds.

The Cotswolds has a number of beautiful houses to inspire you Hidcote/ being one. It is a beautiful garden and is actually open over some of the festive period. Originally designed by Lawerence Johnston a great American plantsman. He designed Hidcot in and arts and craft style. The gardens structured into garden room, they have topiary and colourful plantings. Water also features with formal pools. Pergolas, summer houses and dry stone walls also feature strongly.

Hidcote is now a National Trust property where they are lovingly maintaining the garden.

So if you’re looking for some inspiration from a Garden Designer in the Cotswolds please don’t hesitate to contact us. Whilst it is rather dull at the moment it will soon be the shortest day and we’ll be out in the garden again.

For a little inspiration here is an idea. We repurposed an old barn to create family seating areas. This Pergola was designed for the garden space. We used the old Cotswold stone walls from a delapidated barn.
So if you’re looking for some garden inspiration from a Garden Designer in the Cotswolds why not contact us.