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Overview: Hard Vs Soft Landscaping
Our concern, however, is that jobs undertaken that require both hard and soft landscaping by workers with a building trade background tend to result in trees, shrubs and perennials being planted in their wrongful - or least preferred - habitats. We frequently encounter - and have occasionally had to rectify - plants that appear to have almost been thrown together as an afterthought when paths and patios are laid, walls are built and fences erected, rather than being chosen to complement the hard surfaces previously constructed.
All plants have special requirements in order to remain as healthy as when purchased, and the knowledge of each plant's specific preferences takes many years to develop and is of great importance. It is distressing that less import is placed on the living environment in favour of hard landscaping by many of the professionals responsible for creating garden environments. The limitation of horticultural skills and knowledge leaves a crucial void within this broad field, and does nothing to help the "interest in horticulture in all its branches" that the RHS regards so highly. After all, the word horticulture does pertain to the cultivation - improvement, refinement and advancement - of plants (Cambridge English Dictionary).
This is where Grass Roots Horticulture hopes to redress the balance. The horticultural emphasis we observe at all times may impose a restriction on the work we will undertake - such as the forementioned block paving driveway - but culminates with the work we do undertake having plants that are perfectly suited to the environments they are placed within, whether we plant them ourselves or restyle their existing habitat to better suit their needs.
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Hard landscaping should never dominate the living environments that we call gardens.
Even rockeries we have been commissioned to undertake have not been at the expense of the dynamicly changing, growing power of plants. See below.
Weatherer Baily & Bragg
Ocean Finance
Drayton Park Golf Club
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