01Design
Survey, scaled plan and a planting list made for your soil and light.
A garden is never finished. We design it, build it, plant it and stay for the seasons after.
- No peat, ever
- No plastic lawns
- No chemical feeds
Soil first. Everything else follows.
Four rules every loam garden is built on, whether it is a courtyard behind a terrace or three acres on the edge of the Downs.
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Compost
Feed the soil, not the plant.
We mulch with compost made from our own green waste, never peat, and leave out chemical feeds. Living soil holds water, stores carbon and does the feeding for you.
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Rainwater
Keep every drop that falls.
Rain gardens, gravel instead of tarmac and a water butt on every downpipe. A loam garden sends almost nothing into the drain and needs little watering by its second summer.
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Habitat
Plant for the whole food web.
Native hedges, borders that flower from March to November and seedheads left standing through winter: food and shelter in every month of the year.
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Local
Build from close by.
Sussex flint, local oak and reclaimed brick from within thirty miles. No plastic edging, no imported stone, nothing that will not age well.
How a garden gets made
Four stages and one team. The people who draw your plan are the people who lay the path, set out the plants and come back to cut the meadow in August.
02Build
Paths, walls and ponds laid by our own crew from local materials.
03Plant
Peat-free, Sussex-grown plants, set out by the people who chose them.
04Tend
Seasonal visits that edit, prune and feed, so the garden keeps improving.
Room for wildlife
Every garden we make keeps a gap under the fence 
Last year our camera traps caught hedgehogs in 23 of the 41 gardens we look after.
What aftercare involvesGardens we have made
Three of the forty-one gardens we built and still look after. Each one is visited at least four times a year by the team that planted it.
The brick barn borders
Ringmer · built in 2023
- Size
- 1,400 m²
- Build
- 11 weeks
- Planted
- 2,300 perennials, 140 m of hedge
A townhouse courtyard
Lewes · built in 2024
- Size
- 64 m²
- Build
- 4 weeks
- Reused
- Every flagstone, 900 old bricks
The shade garden
Ditchling · built in 2022
- Size
- 520 m²
- Build
- 7 weeks
- Drained
- A wet slope turned into a rain garden
What we build with
Nothing travels further than it has to. Most of what goes into a loam garden comes from within thirty miles of it.
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Knapped flint
For walls and edging, from Downland farms and the rubble of old barns.
Within 8 miles
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Sussex oak
Green oak for raised beds, benches and pergolas, left to silver with age.
Within 22 miles
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Reclaimed brick
Paths and low walls in bricks saved from local demolitions, cleaned by hand.
Within 30 miles
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Our own compost
Three bays at the yard turn every clipping we take away into next year's mulch.
At our yard
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Hoggin and gravel
Paths that let rain through, bound with clay instead of cement.
Within 25 miles
Aftercare, all year round
Most new gardens fail in their third year, when nobody is looking. Ours are visited every season by the people who planted them.
Spring
March to May · three visits
- Cut back last year's stems once the insects have left them
- Mulch every bed with compost from our yard
- Lift and divide crowded perennials
Summer
June to August · two visits
- Cut meadow paths and the first hay in late July
- Deadhead for a second flush, leave the rest to seed
- Check ponds, butts and new trees through dry spells
Autumn
September to November · two visits
- Plant bulbs, bare-root hedging and new trees
- Rake leaves onto the beds instead of the bonfire
- Sow yellow rattle into lawns turning to meadow
Winter
December to February · one visit
- Prune fruit trees and lay the hedges
- Leave seedheads and hollow stems standing
- Walk the garden with you and plan the year
What it is like to have us around
From people whose gardens we made, and still look after.
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“They talked us out of a lawn we did not need and into a meadow we now cannot stop walking through.”
Priya and Tom HaleKingston near Lewes -
“Four years on, the same two gardeners still come every month. The garden is better each spring than the last.”
Margaret EllisonDitchling -
“We expected a building site for three months. They were gone in seven weeks and left the hedge full of nests.”
Owen WardSeaford
Questions we are asked
Anything else, ask us on the walk round. The first visit is free within twenty miles of Lewes.
How much does a new garden cost?
Most of our builds fall between £18,000 and £90,000. Design on its own starts at £1,400 for a small garden, and the fee comes off the build if we make it.
Where do you work?
Within about forty minutes of our yard in Lewes: Brighton and Hove, Seaford, Uckfield and the edge of the Weald. Aftercare keeps us close, so we do not travel further.
How long until it looks established?
Borders fill out in their second summer; hedges and trees take three to five years. We plan the first year so the garden never looks bare.
Can you take over a garden someone else made?
Yes. We look after it as it is for a full season first, then suggest changes once we know what thrives there.
Will you reuse what is already there?
Always, if it is healthy. Soil, stone, paving and plants on site are used before anything new is bought.
Let’s walk your garden
Tell us a little about the space. One of our designers will call within two working days to arrange a site visit.
- Call
- 01273 000 000
- Write
- hello@loam.example
- Yard
- 1 Example Street, Lewes BN7 0ZZ
- Hours
- Monday to Friday, 8 to 5