A Surrey garden designer, twenty-five years in.

Down to Earth Gardens is Ruth Beamont — an independent garden designer who has been drawing, planting and shaping gardens across Surrey and Sussex since 2001. Twenty-five years on, she still works the whole lifecycle of a garden herself: the first visit, the survey, the scaled concept, the planting, and the co-ordination of any build.

Ruth designs the way a designer should. Nothing is dug until the garden has been surveyed and drawn to scale, so a client can stand back and see how the whole thing fits together — borders, levels, sight-lines and structure — before committing to it. It is the stage that turns a vague wish for “something nicer” into a garden that reads as one considered piece of work.

Her clients tend to arrive unsure. “I had no idea what plants would grow well in my garden,” wrote one; “Ruth had lots of advice, adding curvy borders, and now our garden looks totally different.” Another had “no idea what to do with the garden which consisted of a patio & grass” — and now has a small garden that is “a riot of colour… and really has the ‘wow’ factor.” Giving people the confidence to redesign a tired garden is a large part of what Ruth does.

She does not disappear once the drawing is done. Clients describe being “kept updated and informed with calls, messages and pictures throughout,” and Ruth being “always at the end of the phone.” Where a garden needs building, she introduces a landscaper she trusts and co-ordinates the work herself — “the landscapers she recommended did a lovely job on the patio, and then Ruth came back to the planting.” One point of contact, from start to finish.

Ruth works with a small team — described by more than one client as her “wonderful team of ladies” — and on new gardens she includes three seasonal tidy-ups a year, so the young planting is edited and shaped through its first seasons and grows into the design rather than being abandoned the day the last plant goes in. It is why so many of her Google reviews are from clients who have had her back for the next stage of their garden.