About the practice

About Webster Garden Design

Webster Garden Design is a garden design and garden maintenance practice covering North Yorkshire and County Durham. The work is domestic gardens: layouts and planting plans, borders and lawns, hedges and shrubs, and the garden trees and fruit trees among them.

The practice is small and the work is not subcontracted, so the plan and the planting come from the same pair of hands, and the decisions about soil, aspect and season are made on the ground.

Tree surgery is not part of it. Removal, crown work, stump grinding and storm work go to Ross Webster Tree Services, with the notes from the garden visit.

Enquire about a garden Garden services

How the work runs

Design, planting and garden maintenance

Look at the garden

A visit to walk the plot: aspect and light through the day, soil, levels, drainage and what is worth keeping.

Plan and price it

What gets done, in what order and in which season, with the plants named where planting is involved, set out in writing first.

Do the work

Clearing, soil preparation, planting, pruning and hard work in the garden, in the season each plant wants.

Keep it going

A maintenance round for borders, hedges and lawn, so the garden holds its shape instead of needing a rescue.

Garden work

What this practice takes on

Design starts with the garden as it stands. The layout depends on which way the plot faces, how the levels run, what the soil does in a wet winter, and how the light moves across the day.

Planting runs with the season: bare root while the tree is dormant, container grown stock through the rest of the year, and the soil opened up first.

Maintenance is what most gardens actually need: borders cut back and mulched, hedges trimmed to their line, lawns mown to suit the month, and shrubs pruned by flowering habit rather than by the calendar.

Trees in the garden

Why the tree decision starts in the garden

A tree is rarely a problem on its own. It is a problem in a place: shade on a border, a root plate under the lawn, a branch over the greenhouse, or the gap it leaves if it goes.

So the first answer is usually pruning, in the season the species allows and within what the tree will tolerate: no more than a quarter of the live crown in a year, and the branch collar left intact so the wound seals.

The handover

Working with Ross Webster Tree Services

Ross Webster Tree Services carry out the jobs this practice does not: tree removal, crown reductions, stump grinding, emergency and storm work, tree surveys and commercial contracts, across the same ground in North Yorkshire and County Durham.

The garden visit happens first and the tree is looked at in the context of the plot. The enquiry then goes to them with the notes, and they quote from their own visit.

Where the work is

Where the practice works

York, Harrogate, Richmond and the dales, Darlington, Durham and Bishop Auckland, with the villages around each of them.

The ground changes quickly. The Vale of York runs on heavy clay that sits wet all winter and bakes in a dry spell, while the land towards the dales is thinner and stonier.

Standards

Qualifications, insurance and how the work is set out

Garden work goes wrong quietly: a shrub cut in the wrong month loses a year of flower, and a tree planted too deep never establishes. The protections that matter are plain: a written plan, the right season, clean cuts.

Set out in writing: What gets done, in what order and in which season, agreed before anything is cut or moved.
Timed by species: Plums, cherries and gages are never cut in the dormant season.
Tree work: Climbs, saw work off the ground and stump removal are quoted by Ross Webster Tree Services.
Certificates and cover: NPTC certificates of competence, and 10 million pounds of public liability insurance.

Tree surgery, handled locally

Tree surgery is handled by Ross Webster Tree Services

This practice designs, plants and looks after gardens. Anything that needs a tree surgeon is passed straight to Ross Webster Tree Services: tree removal, crown reductions, stump grinding, emergency and storm work, tree surveys, ash dieback and commercial contracts.

Tree removal
Crown reductions
Stump grinding
Emergency and storm work
Tree surveys
Ash dieback
Commercial contracts

They cover the same ground as this practice across North Yorkshire and County Durham. Their contact details are on their own site, linked below.

Ross Webster Tree Services

Garden guides

Fruit treesWhen to prune apple trees, plums, cherries and pearsWhen to prune apple trees: the dormant window from November to March, why plums and cherries wait for summer, and how an old tree is renewed over three winters.Tree careGarden tree care calendar: what to do through the yearA garden tree care calendar: dormant season pruning, summer checks, autumn soil and mulch, and the winter inspection that spots trouble before it costs a tree.Tree stumpsTree stump killer, stump regrowth and what works in a gardenTree stump killer products explained plainly: what nitrate and glyphosate treatments really do, which species regrow, and why grinding is usually the answer.WildlifeWildlife garden: planting that feeds bees, birds and mothsA wildlife garden that works: long flowering seasons, single flowers, native trees and hedges, water and dead wood, plus the cutting timing that protects birds.

Garden advice from the practice, with planting, pruning and tree care across North Yorkshire and County Durham.

Tree surgery work is handled by Ross Webster Tree Services.