Joe Perkins Design

A rare project where the garden has come before the house.
We’ve been working alongside Architects on this Sussex project, with the landscape being delivered in carefully planned phases. While the house is still under construction, much of the wider garden is already taking shape.
The pool and bespoke sauna sit away from the house, allowing this part of the landscape to be completed before the building house.
McNaughton’s have done a fantastic job bringing these elements to life, and continue to maintain the garden as it establishes. Once the house is complete, they’ll return to deliver the remaining landscape around it.
It’s an unusual way to approach a project, but it means the clients won’t be moving into a new home surrounded by newly planted borders. Instead, they’ll arrive to a garden that’s already settled, thriving and full of life.
The planting, completed last summer, is already looking incredible, and we can’t wait to share the finished project once the house and the rest of the garden are complete!

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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

Not a typical post but a massive bucket list ticked and we’re still on a high!
Natalia and I were lucky enough to spend yesterday at the Wimbledon Men’s Final. What a match! Congratulations to on a fantastic win, but huge credit to Alexander Zverev too – it was incredible from start to finish.
Watching a Wimbledon final from Centre Court has long been something we’d hoped to experience, and it certainly lived up to every expectation.
A huge thank you to Wimbledon and Martyn Falconer for such an amazing day. The hospitality and the excellent seats made it an experience we’ll never forget. We couldn’t have asked for more 🎾🏆🥂💚

Our coastal wildlife garden one year on!
It’s always rewarding to see how a landscape begins to settle into its surroundings. This garden is set within Chichester Harbour Conservancy and is already establishing beautifully after its first year.
The design was shaped by the site’s remarkable setting, working with the existing landscape rather than against it. Species-rich meadow, native woodland planting and seasonal wetland scrapes have been introduced to strengthen habitats, encourage wildlife and create a garden that feels inseparable from the harbour beyond.
Designed to be resilient to heavy clay soils, salt-laden winds and seasonal flooding, the planting is beginning to knit together, softening boundaries while retaining carefully framed views across the estuary.
It’s been great working closely with the planting and maintenance team at and .stall whose careful implementation and ongoing maintenance have helped the garden establish so successfully over its first year. It’s a really good example of what can be achieved when thoughtful design is matched by skilled aftercare.
Our studio drone is coming in super handy to document projects before, during and after, make sure you swipe through to see some of the beautiful views!

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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

This planting combination has coped remarkably well with the recent heatwaves.
In this south-facing border Bunium bulbocastanum, Verbena bonariensis, Verbascum bombyciferum, Stachys byzantina, Verbascum ‘Clementine’, Foeniculum vulgare and Stipa tenuissima continue to perform without being watered despite prolonged hot and dry weather.
As our climate changes, planting for resilience is becoming increasingly important. Selecting species that are well suited to the site can help reduce the need for irrigation while still delivering a long season of interest and supporting pollinators.
The right plant, in the right place, is one of the most effective ways to create gardens that are both beautiful and better adapted to future summers.
Swipe to the end to see the bees in action 🐝

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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 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