Joe Perkins Design

A new perspective on our National Trust project Garden for the Future at Sheffield Park & Garden.
My sons have been learning to fly a drone, and it’s already changing the way we document our projects. Seeing a landscape from above reveals patterns, connections and the relationship between a garden and its wider setting in a way that’s impossible to appreciate from the ground.

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ABOUT: Joe Perkins Design is a multi-award-winning landscape design consultancy, creating innovative outdoor spaces that celebrate the environment, wildlife, and biodiversity. Working across the UK and internationally, we partner with clients who share our passion for sustainable and visionary design. Discover more about our work at: www.joeperkinsdesign.com

At the centre of our new garden at Sheffield Park is a remarkable 500-year-old veteran oak.
Designing around a tree like this isn’t simply a question of leaving space for its canopy. Protecting it, meant understanding what was happening beneath the ground too.
Rather than seeing the tree as a constraint, it became the starting point for many of the design decisions that followed, including a raised boardwalk on screw piles that protects the root zone while allowing visitors to experience this extraordinary part of the landscape.
It’s a reminder that good landscape design doesn’t begin with a blank sheet of paper. It begins with understanding what’s already there.
If you’d like to learn more about how the project evolved, we’ve shared the full article in our Journal. Link in bio.

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ABOUT: Joe Perkins Design is a multi-award-winning landscape design consultancy, creating innovative outdoor spaces that celebrate the environment, wildlife, and biodiversity. Working across the UK and internationally, we partner with clients who share our passion for sustainable and visionary design. Discover more about our work at: www.joeperkinsdesign.com

Some photos of a little courtyard we designed a couple of years ago.
Small gardens have to work hard. In a compact courtyard like this, every material, every plant and every square metre needs to earn its place.
The brief was simple: create a lush oasis and a space for cooking, entertaining and relaxing, with scented planting and evergreen structure.
The Portuguese setts are a feature in themselves providing pattern and texture and the large pots provide focal points amongst a predominantly evergreen planting palette chosen to withstand wind, salt and coastal conditions.
If you don’t have much space but want to BBQ a Big Green Egg is the way to go!
The garden is south-facing so the first floor roof terrace above is a little sun trap throughout the day ☀️
Planting was selected for its ability to tolerate wind and salt-laden air, creating a resilient palette of predominantly evergreen species and grasses that provide year-round interest. In a garden of this size, there is little room for seasonal interest.
The walls are cloaked in Trachelospermum jasminoides (star jasmine), softening the boundaries and, in summer, filling the space with fragrance. Combined with overhead planting and layered textures, the result is a garden that feels immersive despite its modest footprint.
A small garden, but we think it’s one that punches well above its weight.
Best of all the client is super happy!

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ABOUT: Joe Perkins Design is a multi-award-winning landscape design consultancy, creating innovative outdoor spaces that celebrate the environment, wildlife, and biodiversity. Working across the UK and internationally, we partner with clients who share our passion for sustainable and visionary design. Discover more about our work at: www.joeperkinsdesign.com

Some wider views of an incredible project we’re working on with Gould Baxter Architects.
We’re designing a landscape that settles the new house into its setting, strengthens connections across the site and creates spaces for gathering, play and exploration.
Set within 19 acres of pasture, wetland and woodland, this project is being reimagined as a contemporary family estate.
The vision combines meadows, water, sculptural trees and planting for pollinators, habitat and wildlife with accessible paths, productive areas and places to pause, creating a landscape that feels both purposeful and deeply connected to its surroundings.

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ABOUT: Joe Perkins Design is a multi-award-winning landscape design consultancy, creating innovative outdoor spaces that celebrate the environment, wildlife, and biodiversity. Working across the UK and internationally, we partner with clients who share our passion for sustainable and visionary design. Discover more about our work at: www.joeperkinsdesign.com

Visuals:

A few years into our meadow experiment, we’re still learning.
Over the last few years we’ve gradually reduced the area we mow, creating space for wildflowers, bulbs and wildlife. More recently we’ve started actively managing it as a meadow, introducing yellow rattle, sowing wildflower seed, adding Camassia, gladioli and Allium cristophii, and changing how we cut and manage the grass.
Some things have been more successful than others.
This spring brought lots of Camassia’s. The alliums were less enthusiastic. The bindweed, meanwhile, remains relentlessly optimistic.
But that’s the reality of gardening. There are no instant results. Just observation, experimentation and a willingness to keep adjusting course.
The bees, hover flies, grasshopper’s, butterflies and other insects seem far less concerned with perfection than we are.
The border alongside the meadow is an ongoing experimental border. A south-facing border on stony clay over chalk where plants are left to prove themselves in real conditions. Some disappear. Some thrive. A few become indispensable.
Neither area is finished. Both are still evolving.
And perhaps that’s what we enjoy most about them.
I’ve found a before photo, swipe to the end to see where we started!

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ABOUT: Joe Perkins Design is a multi-award-winning landscape design consultancy, creating innovative outdoor spaces that celebrate the environment, wildlife, and biodiversity. Working across the UK and internationally, we partner with clients who share our passion for sustainable and visionary design. Discover more about our work at: www.joeperkinsdesign.com

We’ve been setting out and planting the pool and barn garden at one of our long-term Sussex projects this week.
We’ve been working with the clients on this garden since 2022, developing the landscape in phases as different areas of the site evolve over time.
Rather than replacing perfectly functional elements, we’ve worked with what was already here. The existing pool and surrounding paving has been retained and the reducing waste and the environmental impact of the project while allowing investment in the landscape itself.
The planting combines tall perennial and shrub borders, ornamental grasses, multi-stem trees, evergreen structure and drought-tolerant gravel planting. Inspired by naturalistic prairie planting, the palette focuses on warm colours, texture and movement, creating year-round interest while helping to provide screening and a sense of enclosure around the pool.
Around 3,500 plants and trees are being added to this area, which will increase biodiversity and habitat for pollinators and other wildlife.
Elsewhere, woodland-edge planting and a cut flower garden soften the side of the barn and connect the pool garden to the wider landscape.
Adding the plants is always one of the most exciting stages of a project. The framework is in place, and the garden begins to come alive!
As always brilliant working with the team Jack Kent | Garden Creations | Kent & East Sussex Landscaping
Swipe to the end to see before!

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ABOUT: Joe Perkins Design is a multi-award-winning landscape design consultancy, creating innovative outdoor spaces that celebrate the environment, wildlife, and biodiversity. Working across the UK and internationally, we partner with clients who share our passion for sustainable and visionary design. Discover more about our work at: www.joeperkinsdesign.com

A double celebration for this month.
Not only is it three years since he joined the studio, but he has also recently completed the first stage of the Society of Garden + Landscape Designers accreditation process (garden in image one).
Matt started his career on site as a landscaper, before completing an apprenticeship in horticulture and later graduating with a First Class Honours degree in Garden Design. Today, as our Technical Lead Designer, he combines that practical experience with an impressive depth of construction knowledge and a reputation as our resident Vectorworks ninja.
Much of what we design eventually has to be built, and Matt plays a key role in making that happen. From detailed technical packages to solving complex construction challenges, he helps turn ideas into deliverable projects.
We’re delighted to see him take this next step in his professional development and are proud to have him as part of the team.
Congratulations, Matt 🥳 🥳

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ABOUT: Joe Perkins Design is a multi-award-winning landscape design consultancy, creating innovative outdoor spaces that celebrate the environment, wildlife, and biodiversity. Working across the UK and internationally, we partner with clients who share our passion for sustainable and visionary design. Discover more about our work at: www.joeperkinsdesign.com

When we first arrived, this pond was little more than a body of open water with limited habitat value.
As part of the wider garden project, we restored and replanted the pond and its margins, introducing over 6,000 plants including ferns, shade-tolerant grasses and flowering perennials suited to the damp conditions around the water’s edge.
Ponds are among the most valuable habitats we can create in a garden. They support a remarkable diversity of wildlife, help slow and store rainwater during heavy downpours, improve water quality and contribute to the ecological resilience of the wider landscape.
Gardens like this are never truly finished. Working closely with the landscapers Jack Kent | Garden Creations | Kent & East Sussex Landscaping and head gardener, we continue to refine and develop the site and allowing the garden to evolve over time.
These photographs show the journey from before, through construction and planting, to today. While the planting is still establishing, the pond is already becoming a richer, more dynamic habitat that will continue to evolve and mature over the coming years.
Swipe through to see the process!

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ABOUT: Joe Perkins Design is a multi-award-winning landscape design consultancy, creating innovative outdoor spaces that celebrate the environment, wildlife, and biodiversity. Working across the UK and internationally, we partner with clients who share our passion for sustainable and visionary design. Discover more about our work at: www.joeperkinsdesign.com

A few recent photographs from a garden we planted last year, now enjoying its first full growing season.
Set within the protected landscape of Chichester Harbour, the design draws on the site’s mature oaks, estuary views and existing habitats, allowing woodland, meadow and wetland planting to blend into the wider landscape.
A year on, the garden is beginning to establish beautifully, with the planting softening, weaving together and attracting increasing wildlife interest.
Many thanks to the planting and maintenance team & .gardens for sharing these updates, it’s looking fantastic 🙌

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ABOUT: Joe Perkins Design is a multi-award-winning landscape design consultancy, creating innovative outdoor spaces that celebrate the environment, wildlife, and biodiversity. Working across the UK and internationally, we partner with clients who share our passion for sustainable and visionary design. Discover more about our work at: www.joeperkinsdesign.com

A small corner of our Sussex Farmhouse garden.
With a mix of soils in a small area, from free-draining and sunny terraces, to consistently wet and exposed slopes, this area took careful consideration when it came to plant choices. We worked with the mindset of ‘right plant, right place’ to ensure the scheme would not only work together, but thrive together.

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ABOUT: Joe Perkins Design is a multi-award-winning landscape design consultancy, creating innovative outdoor spaces that celebrate the environment, wildlife, and biodiversity. Working across the UK and internationally, we partner with clients who share our passion for sustainable and visionary design. Discover more about our work at: www.joeperkinsdesign.com