Websites for garden designers
Garden designer websites that sell the design fee
A garden designer sells thinking before anything is planted, and the hardest part is persuading people to pay for it. Your website should show how you work and what the fee buys, so the people who enquire already expect to pay for a design.
- Price from
- £1,400
- Build time
- 14 working days
- Built by
- Coltura
- Growth Care™
- £149 a month
One-off, for a Growth Website of up to 6 pages.
From agreed direction to launch.
Our studio in Didsbury, Manchester.
Optional. Cancel any time, with a month’s notice.
How your customers choose
Nobody needs a garden designer by Friday. They need to trust one.
Garden design is about as considered as a purchase gets. Clients spend weeks looking at your work before they enquire, and what they are really deciding is whether you are worth paying for thinking before anything is planted.
When it is urgent
Urgency usually means a deadline
The nearest thing to urgency is a date: a house sale, a wedding in the garden, a build that has started and needs a plan. They want to know how soon you could visit, and whether design time and planting seasons make their date realistic. Saying so early saves a disappointing first visit.
When it is considered
A whole garden, designed properly
This client compares portfolios and tries to work out what the fee buys and who will build the garden. A site that answers both brings enquiries from people who already expect to pay for design.
What wins their trust, what loses it, and what they search for
What makes them trust you
- Projects at the scale and style they have in mind
- The designer named and pictured beside the studio logo
- Reviews that describe the process as well as the garden
- Honest timescales for design and for planting
What makes them leave
- Gardens shown with no plan or brief beside them
- Having to email just to find out what a consultation costs
- Not knowing who will actually build the garden
- Heavy galleries that never finish loading on a phone
What they type into Google
- “garden designer near me”
- “garden design cost”
- “small garden design”
- “family garden ideas”
- “planting plan”
- “landscape architect near me”
- “garden redesign”
- “courtyard garden design”
People describe the garden they want rather than the service: a small courtyard, a family garden, a planting plan. A page for each kind of garden you design, built from real projects, gives those searches somewhere to land.
01 / 04
Why so many homeowners expect design for nothing
Plenty of landscapers offer a “free design” with the build, so homeowners arrive thinking design is a sales cost that someone else absorbs. A designer's website has to undo that quietly, by showing the work that sits behind a finished plan and what the client walks away with at each stage.
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Lay the process out in the order it happens, and name the thing delivered at each step. People are far happier paying for a measured survey and a scaled plan than for something vaguely called “design”.
- Initial consultation: a visit, a conversation about how they use the garden, and whether you are the right fit. Say whether it is paid.
- Measured survey: levels, boundaries, aspect, soil and existing trees.
- Concept: layout options and a mood for the space, discussed and refined.
- Master plan: the scaled drawing a contractor can price and build from.
- Planting plan and schedule: what goes where, and how many.
- During the build: site visits, or full project management if you offer it.
02 / 04
Portfolio pages that set the plan beside the garden
A photo of a beautiful garden could have been built by anyone. The drawing next to it proves the idea was yours. For each project, show the plan beside the finished space, and write a few lines on the brief and the constraints: a north-facing plot, heavy clay, a steep slope, a neighbour's window, a family that needed somewhere for a trampoline. Then explain the decisions you made. That is the evidence of design thinking a client is paying for.
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Timing matters. A garden photographed at handover often looks thin, because the planting has not had a season to fill out. The photographs that sell your work are usually taken a year or two later, so go back, and add them to the project page when you do.
03 / 04
Design only, design and build, or somewhere between
Visitors need to know who will actually build their garden and who they will be paying. Some designers hand the plan over and step away. Some recommend landscapers they trust and visit during the build. Some run the whole project. Any of these can work, but a site that does not say which one you do attracts enquiries that assume the other.
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If landscapers pass clients to you, or you pass builds to them, say so. Clients referred by a landscaper will look at your website before they get in touch, and a clear explanation of how you work together reassures them the handover will not fall through a gap.
04 / 04
Instagram finds them; the website convinces them
Searches like “garden designer near me” are fairly rare, but the people making them are serious. Many clients arrive by other routes: Instagram, Pinterest, Houzz, a show garden, a landscaper's recommendation, a friend's garden. By the time they reach your site they often already know your name. The website's job is to confirm what they hoped, and it has to do that quickly on a phone, with large images that still load fast. That means compressed images and a lightweight build that loads quickly.
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Your Google Business Profile still matters for the searches that do happen. Because you complete relatively few projects a year, each review needs to count, so ask clients to describe the process as well as the result. Paid ads are rarely worth it for a design-only practice: the searches are few and a wrong click costs as much as a right one. Referral partners and a strong portfolio usually do more.
What the website needs
The garden design site, page by page
A portfolio site that sells the thinking: how you work, what the fee buys and what the gardens look like once they have grown in.
Homepage. The kind of garden you design, your strongest project, how you work in a line and a way to book a consultation.
Project pages. The brief, the constraints, the plan beside the finished garden, and later photos as it fills out.
How we work. Each stage from consultation to build, with what is delivered at each one.
Fees. The consultation fee and the basis for design fees.
Design and build. Who builds the garden: you, landscapers you trust or the client's own contractor, and how the handover works.
Enquiry. Property type, garden size, what they want to change, the budget for the build, timing, photos and how they heard of you.
The enquiry route, and what to leave out
The enquiry route
From admiring your work to a paid consultation
- The visitor sees projects like theirs, each with the plan beside the garden.
- They read how you work and what the consultation costs before they enquire.
- The enquiry form asks about the garden, the budget for the build as well as the design, and for a few photos.
- The form says how far ahead you are booking consultations, so timing is clear from the start.
Leave it out
What not to put on the site
- A free design offer, unless that is genuinely how you work
- A blog nobody has added to in years
- Photos uploaded straight from the camera, uncompressed
- Stock images of gardens that are not yours
Proof and credentials
What a client checks before paying for design
Anyone can call themselves a garden designer, so clients look for evidence of training and of design thinking. These are the checkable parts.
What to show, item by item
- Society of Garden and Landscape Designers
- If you are a Registered Member of the SGLD, formerly the Society of Garden Designers, show it with the MSGLD letters and say what it means. It carries weight with exactly the clients who value design.
- Protected trees
- Trees with a preservation order need the council's consent before work, and trees in a conservation area need six weeks' notice first. A line saying you check shows experience.
- Professional indemnity insurance
- If you hold it, say so. A client paying for a design that others will build from wants to know the advice is backed.
- Show gardens, awards and press
- Only the ones you genuinely have, each with a sentence on what it was.
The standard of build
There is no demonstration site for a garden design practice, and one borrowed from another sector would not tell you much. Every site is designed and built from scratch around the business, works properly on a phone and is yours outright. If you want to see the standard of build first, three demonstration sites for invented businesses, a roofer, a dental practice and a wine bar, are on the examples page.
See the demonstration sitesIn our clients’ words
What our clients say.
Questions
The questions garden designers ask.
Should a garden designer publish their fees?
Publish the consultation fee, because it is the first thing people need to decide on. For design fees, explain how you charge, whether a fixed fee per stage or a basis tied to the size of the project, and give a starting point if you are comfortable with one. Clients who see the basis of the fee are much less likely to be shocked by the quote.
How is a garden designer website different from a landscaper website?
A garden designer is selling ideas, drawings and expertise before anything is built, so the site has to explain the process and justify a fee. A landscaper sells the construction itself, so their site proves build quality. The designer's portfolio shows the plan next to the garden; the landscaper's shows the groundwork and the finish.
Should my portfolio show every style of garden I can do?
No. Show a dozen styles and you look like a generalist. Lead with the work you want more of, whether that is naturalistic planting, small urban courtyards, family gardens or large country plots, and let the rest go. The scale of the projects on the page filters budgets better than any price list, because people can see what kind of garden you usually take on.
The offer in brief
Five answers that are the same for every business we build for. Open any of them.
What does it cost, and what is included?
Growth Websites start at £1,400, one-off, for a complete rebuild of up to 6 pages with setup included. A larger site is the Signature Website, at £3,500. Up to six pages, which for a garden design practice usually means a homepage that leads with the kind of garden you design, a projects page with plans beside finished gardens, a how-we-work page, a fees page and a page explaining who builds the garden. You also get an enquiry form that asks the right questions, properly prepared images, your Google Business Profile set up and linked, and tracking of enquiries. A bigger site with more pages is the Signature Website.
All nine parts are included:
- Growth Audit
- Offer and Messaging Rebuild
- Complete Website Rebuild
- Conversion Optimisation
- Local Search Foundation
- AI Search Readiness
- Conversion Tracking
- Performance Optimisation
- Launch Support
How long does it take, and what do you need from me?
About 14 working days from agreed direction to launch. You watch the real site take shape on a private link, with one round of considered changes before launch. What we need from you: plans and photos for a handful of your best projects, your consultation fee and how you charge for design, and the kind of garden you want more of. Beyond that, about half an hour on the phone; we write the copy.
Who builds it?
Coltura, an independent digital studio in Didsbury, Manchester. We do every audit and every build in-house, so you deal directly with the studio doing the work. We take on a limited number of builds at once, which is why there is sometimes a short wait before a build starts.
Do I have to pay every month?
No. Growth Care is £149 a month if you want it, and entirely optional. It covers hosting and security, monitoring, content changes within a fair monthly allowance, a plain-English monthly report, a quarterly conversion review and messaging us directly. Cancel any time, with a month's notice. You are also free to host the site yourself.
What if it is not right for us?
The audit and the direction come before you commit. If the plan is the wrong fit for your business, you can walk away and keep the audit. You own the site, the domain and the content outright, and after launch anything that does not work the way it was built to work is fixed at no charge for 30 days.
Where to next
Also for garden designers:
Related trades we build for:
Next steps
Find out what your website is costing you.
Ask for the free Growth Audit of your current site. Then open it on your phone on mobile data rather than wifi, and count how long your best project takes to appear. While you wait, ask whether a stranger could tell what your consultation costs. Slow images and a hidden fee both lose serious clients quietly.
Done by hand and back within 48 hours. You can have it without a phone call.
Or ring us on 07958 394808Or start on your own
- Instant website check: one page checked, with the evidence for each finding.
- Revenue leak calculator: what more enquiries would be worth, worked out from your own numbers.