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Seasonal interest doesn’t end when flowering does. 🌾🍂

At our Future Plants project, the garden continues to evolve well into autumn. As flowers begin to fade, other qualities become more prominent. Seedheads, grasses, changing foliage and the structure of the planting start to shape the character of the landscape.

This is an important part of how we design plant communities. We are not only thinking about colour at the height of summer, but about how plants will age, what they will leave behind, and how different layers will continue to work together as the seasons change.

By allowing stems and seedheads to remain, the planting gains texture, movement and structure through the quieter months. Grasses become increasingly sculptural, dried flower heads catch the low autumn light, and evergreen elements help hold the composition together.

There is ecological value in this too. Leaving seedheads and standing stems provides food, shelter and habitat for wildlife through autumn and winter.

These photographs, taken in October, show that a garden does not need to be at peak flowering to feel full of life.

Sometimes the most interesting season begins when the flowers start to fade. 🌿

To see more of the project and the full October photoshoot, take a look at our website through the link in our bio.

Do you have a favourite picture? Tell us in the comments 🥳✨

📸 @garymorrisroe
🌱 @future.plants

#tuin #garden #plants #landscapearchitecture #gardendesign

Sometimes a design detail appears for only a few days each year. That doesn’t make it accidental. 🍁

Seasonal colour gives us an opportunity to create temporary relationships between planting, hard landscape and architecture. These moments appear, disappear and return again the following year.

In one of our South London gardens, the autumn-yellow foliage of the ginkgo becomes particularly striking against the dark hard landscaping. That same yellow is picked up by a nearby pot, creating a brief connection across the garden. It may last only a short time, but it was considered as part of the composition from the beginning.

At Where Indoors Meets Autumn, the warm tones of the interiors extend into the garden through feature walls and pots. In autumn, foliage begins to take on similar colours, adding another temporary layer to the relationship between inside and out.

At our Woodland Glade Sanctuary project, colour has been considered across both planting and materials. Fagus sylvatica ‘Purpurea’, Aquilegia vulgaris var. stellata ‘Black Barlow’ and Astrantia major ‘Claret’ introduce rich purple and red tones amongst a matrix of evergreen Sesleria nitida, responding to the brick tones of the house and hard landscaping.

These relationships don’t need to exist all year. In fact, part of the pleasure is that they don’t.

Designing seasonally allows small, fleeting moments to appear throughout the year, adding another layer of depth to the garden each time it changes.

Want to discover some of our favourite plants for the most spectacular autumn colour? 🍂🍁

📸 @richardbloomphoto @garymorrisroe @eva_nemeth
#autumn #garden #specialmoments #designer #nature

Interesting scenes are beginning to emerge in this new garden of ours, designed and built in Breda, the Netherlands. 🇳🇱🌿

Wrapping around the house, the garden reveals new perspectives as the sun moves throughout the day, offering many different places to explore and enjoy.

Do you know which ornamental grass captures the light so beautifully in these pictures? 🌾

Collaboration @talettavanberckel @koninklijke_ginkel_groep

#tuin #landscapearchitecture #plants #garden #breda

To design a garden for spring, you often need to start thinking about it in autumn. 🌷🍂

While the landscape around us is changing colour, as designers we are already looking several months ahead.

Autumn is the time to plant many spring-flowering bulbs, adding another seasonal layer to the garden. Rather than thinking about each season separately, we design planting as a succession of moments, considering what will emerge next and what will eventually take its place.

Three of our projects show how differently bulbs can be used.

At Woodland Glade Sanctuary, areas of lawn that receive little use in early spring are transformed into carpets of flowers for a few weeks.

At A Garden of Sequences and Seasons, bulbs emerge throughout the planting and across the wildflower meadow, bringing early colour before the meadow reaches its peak later in the year.

And at A Chiswick Hideaway, bulbs are combined with sculptural elements and pots, adding seasonal interest to more intimate garden spaces.

Different approaches, but the same principle: a garden should offer something to discover in every season. 🌿

So, if you’re thinking about spring, now is the time to start planting!

Here are 10 of our favourite bulbs and tuberous plants for interest across the seasons:

1. Tulipa ‘Ice Stick’
2. Cyclamen hederifolium
3. Allium sphaerocephalon
4. Chionodoxa forbesii
5. Eranthis hyemalis
6. Fritillaria meleagris
7. Fritillaria uva-vulpis
8. Galanthus elwesii
9. Leucojum aestivum ‘Gravetye Giant’
10. Narcissus poeticus

Which ones are you planting this autumn? 🌱

#bulbs #springbulbs
📸 @kate_shyian @garymorrisroe @alistergthorpe

We’re delighted to see our Woodland Glade Sanctuary in Hilversum,NL featured in the November issue of House & Garden 🌿

Surrounded by nature reserves, the garden was designed to feel connected to the wider landscape, creating the sense of moving through a woodland edge rather than a conventional residential garden.

Meandering gravel paths weave through generous planting, creating a sequence of spaces that feel informal, immersive and closely connected to the surrounding landscape. At the rear, the landscape was reshaped into a softer slope, creating a stronger connection between the house and garden and leading towards a natural swimming pool and sauna.

The planting was designed to feel layered and natural, framing views from the house while allowing the garden to settle into its surroundings and evolve through the seasons ✨

Thank you to @houseandgardenuk @clarefostergardens for featuring the project, to @carolinebeckwriter for the writing, to @eva_nemeth for beautifully capturing the garden 📷 and to our clients who believe in our vision. 🥳🌿

A garden shouldn’t have just one best season. 🍂❄️🌱☀️

Our New Beginnings: Church Barn project was photographed throughout all four seasons, allowing us to see the same landscape continually changing.

Here are 10 plants we love for the way they bring seasonal interest, texture, movement and structure throughout the year:

1. Aster cordifolius ‘Little Carlow’ - soft clouds of late-season blue flowers.
2. Calamagrostis × acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ - strong vertical form and lasting seedheads.
3. Sesleria autumnalis - fine texture and fresh green foliage.
4. Sanguisorba ‘Cangshan Cranberry’ - elegant flower spikes and gentle movement.
5. Phlomis russeliana - architectural form and sculptural dried flower heads.
6. Sporobolus heterolepis - airy movement and beautiful autumn colour.
7. Stipa ichu - light, feathery texture and movement in the wind.
8. Sedum ‘José Aubergine’ - dark foliage and rich late-summer flowers.
9. Agastache ‘Blue Fortune’ - a long flowering season and upright blue-purple blooms.
10. Verbena hastata - slender flower spikes, vertical structure and long seasonal interest.

In winter, the planting becomes quieter and the underlying structure of the garden comes to the fore.

For us, planting is never about creating one perfect moment. It is about considering how different layers emerge, disappear and take over from one another as the seasons change.

Over the next few posts, we’ll look more closely at how we design with seasonality - from planning spring interest in autumn to leaving seedheads standing through winter.

A garden is never static, and that constant change is part of what makes it so interesting. 🌿

📸🌿 @alistergthorpe @garymorrisroe
👷🏻‍♂️🌿 @shootsandleaveslondon
🌿🌿 @leongardens

#garden #landscapedesi̇gn #plants #barn #essex

We’re very happy to share that three of our projects have been shortlisted for the SGLD Awards 2027! 🌿✨

- Woodland Glade Sanctuary - Hilversum, NL 🇳🇱
- Future Plants Landscape - Lisse, NL 🇳🇱
- Where Indoors Meets Autumn - London, UK 🇬🇧

It’s wonderful to see three very different projects recognised this year, each with its own character, setting and planting story.

We’re also excited that all three projects are eligible for the People’s Choice Award 🥳

If you have a favourite, we would love your support. Explore all the shortlisted projects and cast your vote via the link in our bio.

Voting closes 31 October 2026.

A big thank you to all our clients, collaborators, contractors and everyone who helped bring these gardens to life. 🌿

The winners will be announced at the SGLD Awards ceremony on 5 February 2027.

@future.plants @shootsandleaveslondon @garymorrisroe