Matt Haddon Gardens is a garden design company that thrives when collaborating with homeowners, architects, or landscapers to design inspirational and contemplative spaces where people and wildlife coexist.
Founder Matt Haddon MSGD MBALI is an experienced, award-winning landscape and garden designer. Matt is a Registered Member of the Society of Garden Designers (one of around 200 accredited garden designers in the UK), an Accredited Designer with the British Association of Landscape Industries, a Registered Designer with the Association of Professional Landscapers, and a full member of the Chartered Institute of Horticulture. He has written frequently on garden and landscape design for the Garden Design Journal, and also on wider horticultural matters, for example in the RHS’s The Garden magazine.
Matt brings an eclectic range of experience to the design practice. With an MA in Medieval Studies (having specialised in Anglo-Saxon and Viking art), Matt also wielded a chainsaw as a tree surgeon for a period in his twenties. He has a lifelong interest in ecology and ornithology and also worked as a manager for a blue-chip insurance company for ten years.
“I am a keen plantsman, with a particular love of trees. My time is spent immersed in gardens – designing them, writing about them, visiting them and, when I get a moment, enjoying them (usually with my eyes shut, listening to the bees buzzing and to birdsong).”
“Designing gardens means transforming people’s lives, bringing them closer to the true essence of Nature. Now more than ever we feel we are linked to the natural world and have a responsibility to preserve it. I am passionate about hiking in the Dolomites and visiting Italian and English gardens.“
Garden design
Our overall garden design philosophy is strongly influenced by classic landscape design, creating contemporary gardens, naturalistically planted, where people and wildlife coexist.
This approach allows us to create places for quiet contemplation and that have their elegant simplicity underlined by careful specification of planting, materials and detailing.
Large gardens
Much of our work is within larger gardens, often in rural or semi-rural settings. Often our clients will want to maximise their use of space, opening up or reinvigorating previously neglected areas. Usually there is a demanding budget to meet too.
Our naturalistic planting style and contemporary garden designs deliver a wow factor, creating spaces that sit comfortably within their natural surroundings, and which balance open areas with feelings of intimacy.
Planning conditions
Many of the garden design projects we undertake need to sit alongside listed buildings or within conservation areas. For this reason, we avoid any preconceived ideas of how your garden should look. Instead, we adopt a sympathetic approach, delivering coherent and complementary garden designs that meet your needs and satisfy planning requirements.
A new home in the countryside Building a new home in the cou...
Choosing a landscape partner The selection of a landscape de...
Sustainability in the garden Many, many words are being writ...
Wildlife friendly gardens, part 1 Biodiversity in the garden...
Wildlife friendly gardens Our series of posts on biodiversit...
Wildlife friendly gardens, part 3 Your garden is a shared sp...
Wildlife friendly gardens, part 4 As we approach the end of ...
Wildlife friendly gardens, part 5 As this initial series of ...
Within a biodiverse garden the wildlife with whom you will s...
What is a cottage garden? The cottage garden has been a popu...
Matt Haddon’s garden design for a Traditional Garden has f...
There are countless benefits to including water in your gard...
Designing a low maintenance garden does not mean you have to...
So, it’s February – which traditionally is a wet mon...
With all the hardship of 2020 came a positive – we were fo...
January is a month of calm. The hectic days of Christmas hav...
The simple answer is…not a lot. There is still plenty to e...
November comes with longer nights and shorter days but there...
Well we are heading towards the end of the year, winter is o...
September is a month when many gardeners look not at the pas...
August is the month of peak enjoyment for most people in the...
July is the month people tend to neglect the gardening in fa...
Sometimes prospective clients think that getting their garde...
Past experience suggests that you need to make the most of t...
There are three basic methods of making your garden feel les...
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April is the month when the garden starts to put on a show &...
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As part of the design process the fundamental task I have is...
If I said I was going to live my life by the beliefs and pre...
Working with plants on a daily basis it seems to me difficul...
