Garden Design

I am RHS trained and have worked as a gardener for over fifteen years, alongside growing cut flowers and designing for weddings and events. Plants and flowers are my passion and I love working with clients throughout the garden design process to realise their dream garden.

Sustainability is an important factor in my work and I love balancing design with biodiversity to create gardens that are attractive to humans and wildlife alike. I work alongside landscapers for the hard landscaping details and carefully select and source your plants from UK nurseries. I love getting stuck in with the planting and offer after care visits to ensure the plants are establishing and the garden continues to evolve.

Scroll to see some of my past projects.

  • I’m Rosanna Bailey (Rosie to all that know me) and I’ve worked with plants and flowers for most of my adult life. I work from my garden studio, surrounded by my cut flower garden and three cats.

  • I can offer full garden redesigns or suggest planting for existing borders and containers.

    I carry out site visits or phone consultations to get to know your garden and then write up plant lists, design mood boards, draw scale garden plans and source the perfect plants for your space. I also offer onsite planting and aftercare maintenance as I love to watch my gardens establish and be able to make tweaks along the way.

  • On smaller soft landscaping projects I often work alone, but also love collaborating with my friends in the landscaping business to complete full garden redesigns where hard landscaping like patios, walls and structures are involved. I design the specifications and over see the build to make sure we’re all on the same page at each stage of the design process.

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A landscaped garden with seating area, potted plants, trees, plants, and a corten steel water feature on a sunny day.

Past Projects

Explore a curated collection of some of my past work.

A small outdoor patio with two white ornate metal chairs and a matching round table, surrounded by a corner shaped raised bed with planting and a large leafy tree against white painted brick walls.
Rusty decorative birdbath surrounded by green and purple plants against a white brick wall.

Client
Portugal Place Cambridge

Details
A city courtyard garden, revamped raised beds playing with a mainly green colour palette. Ornamental grasses - Anemanthele lessoniana and Stipa tenuissima were chosen for their peach and copper hues, along with Heuchera ‘Marmalade’ to pick up the patina of the clients antique bowls and pedestals displayed in the garden.

A sunny outdoor garden with chairs, plants, and a small water feature in a modern residential neighborhood.
A bespoke corten steel raised bed planter filled with pink, yellow, and purple flowers, with tall green plants and wispy white flowers behind it, set against a dark wooden house exterior.

Details
A garden redesign project replacing a large lawn with a new seating area, herbaceous perennial beds and multi stem trees used as focal points within the space. A 5m bespoke corten steel raised bed was designed to bring the garden along the side of the house. A great alternative to planting into bad soil the raised beds allowed me to bring in a well balanced container compost which will support large plants for many years. Continuing with the corten theme I also sourced a beautiful water table which brings movement and sound to the garden while being very low maintenance. The birds love a splash in the shallow water too!

Client
Trumpington residential garden

A vibrant garden filled with blooming flowers, shrubs, and a young tree under a bright blue sky with scattered clouds.
A lush garden with various shrubs, small trees, and flowers, under a partly cloudy sky.

Client
Cambridge front garden

Details
A front garden design with a brief asking for a wildlife friendly garden which combined informal drifts of plants but retaining some more formal structure. I sourced Ilex crenata topiary balls of various sizes for form - they bring a playful touch to the garden while also anchoring the design. I then chose ornamental grasses, bulbs and herbaceous perennials to drift through bed, softening the overall feel of the garden and allowing select varieties to self seed into the bark mulch.

A garden with a bamboo fence, tall fern plants, and various smaller green plants on a brick ground.
A backyard garden with a circular brick pathway, a raised flower bed edged with wooden logs, and various plants and trees, including a large tree with a light-colored trunk and green leaves, under a blue sky with some clouds.

Details
The client wanted a playful space for her daughter to play, and for it to have a woodland/beachy feel. The garden was designed around an already purchased teepee and an existing garden studio, so space was tight, but by creating raised beds I was able to bring in plenty of planting. A new fence of sustainably sourced bamboo was chosen to echo the uprights of the teepee and the children’s playground posts, which formed the raised beds. I found beautiful coloured sea glass from a beach comber on Etsy which I scattered through the Cotswold pebbles used as edging for the Indian sandstone paving. When the clients daughter grows out of the teepee this will be removed and replaced with a small seating area. The tall planting surrounding the space will blur the boundaries of the tiny garden and create an immersive feel sitting amongst the plants.

Client
Cambridge residential garden