Opening
This month we've been writing about making things count. Making a small garden feel generous. Making design decisions that evidence says will support how you feel. Making plant choices that will still be right in 20 years. And making your maintenance time count by dropping the tasks that never mattered.
Three months of articles, and one consistent thread through all of them: informed decisions produce better gardens.
Here's what we've published this final month.
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Featured Article
Small Garden Design in Surrey: Making Every Square Metre Count
There's a persistent assumption that small gardens are a compromise. The opposite is closer to the truth — in a small garden, every choice is visible, every proportion is felt, and the discipline of editing produces spaces with more character than their larger, less considered counterparts.
We wrote about diagonal lines and borrowed views, the power of one generous gesture, why trying to fit everything in is the biggest mistake, and the principles that consistently make compact Surrey gardens feel twice their size.
[Read the full article →]
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Also This Month
Designing a Garden for Wellbeing: What Actually Works
We translated the research on stress, attention, and outdoor time into specific design decisions. The 70/30 green-to-hard ratio. Composing views from inside the house. Creating reasons to linger under trees. Removing the friction between indoors and outdoors in British weather.
[Read →]
Future-Proofing Your Surrey Garden
Plant swaps we're recommending now: hornbeam replacing beech, Viburnum tinus replacing laurel, Ilex crenata replacing box. What the RHS lists say, what works on both Bagshot sands and London Clay, and why diversity of plant origin is a strength.
[Read →]
Garden Maintenance Myths
Wound paint on pruning cuts? Unnecessary. Feeding your lawn every six weeks? Overkill. Digging your borders every year? Actively harmful. We went through the most persistent myths and separated what the evidence supports from what's just tradition.
[Read →]
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One Thing Worth Knowing
Most garden maintenance myths share a common thread: the assumption that more intervention is better. More feeding, more watering, more digging, more treating, more tidying.
The evidence — both scientific and from our own 50 years of maintenance across Surrey — suggests the opposite. Gardens managed with restraint, informed timing, and purposeful attention tend to be healthier, more resilient, and less work in the long run.
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Looking Back — Three Months in Numbers
Over the past 12 weeks, we've published articles covering garden design, health research, climate adaptation, soil science, property value, real costs, contemporary style, spring preparation, wellbeing design, future-proofing, small spaces, and maintenance myths.
Every claim sourced. Every piece of evidence distinguished from practitioner experience. Every article written to be useful whether you work with us or not.
That's the kind of content we think Surrey homeowners deserve.
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From Montrose
If anything you've read over these three months has got you thinking about your garden — whether it's a project you've been considering, a problem you've noticed, or just a question about what's possible — we'd welcome the conversation.
Two generations. Fifty years. Thousands of Surrey gardens. And always happy to talk about yours.
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Montrose Landscapes | Woking, Surrey | montrose-landscapes.com
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