Hartwell & Crane is a design-led studio. We hold the whole arc of a garden, from the first survey through to the last plant set in the ground, as a single unbroken process. No hand-offs. No drawings that the build cannot honour.
A garden is not decorated. It is composed: ground, level, light and planting resolved together, before a single line is committed to build.
Most gardens are designed by one party and built by another. The drawing arrives, the realities of the ground intervene, and the idea is quietly compromised on site.
We close that gap. The same studio that draws your garden builds it, which means a detail is only ever drawn if we already know how it will be made. The intent survives the journey from paper to ground.
Hartwell & Crane · SE1
We work end to end, but each garden draws on a distinct craft. These are the three we hold in-house, so the responsibility for the result never leaves the studio.
Concept through to a fully resolved scheme: spatial layout, levels, structure and the considered detail that gives a garden its quiet authority.
The making of the garden by our own team: groundworks, drainage, structure and the fine carpentry and stonework that the drawings call for.
The living layer, designed for colour, form and texture across the seasons, so the garden reads differently in February than it does in July.
Every project moves through six considered stages. Each one earns the right to begin the next. Nothing is skipped, and nothing is rushed onto the ground before it is properly drawn.
We walk the space with you and listen to how you want to live in it. Light, privacy, how you move through the garden, what it should feel like in five years. From this we set the brief, the budget and an honest scope.
We measure the garden as it truly is: levels, boundaries, drainage falls, established trees, services and aspect. Good design is site-driven, and a survey is what keeps the drawing honest to the place.
Here the garden takes shape. We resolve spaces, levels and the relationship between hard and soft, and present it as scaled plans and a visual study so you can stand inside the idea before any ground is broken.
Every step, wall, terrace and bespoke piece is drawn as a construction detail. Because we build what we draw, these drawings already carry the knowledge of how each element will be made and how it will weather.
Our team takes the scheme into the ground: groundworks, structure, stone, timber and the finishing craft. One studio carries the project, so the line on the drawing and the joint on site are the same decision.
The planting goes in last, set against the finished structure for colour, form and seasonal change. We hand over the garden with notes on care and return through the first year as it settles into itself.
An idea, a survey, a drawing, a build, a garden that lives. The process is the reason a Hartwell & Crane garden looks resolved rather than assembled.
No two of our gardens look alike, because no two sites or briefs do. A glimpse of the range, from a tight city courtyard to a long suburban plot.
A long rear garden reordered around a still water rill and a floating oak deck. Level changes were used to draw the eye down the plot, with clipped evergreen structure holding the scheme through winter.
A planting-led scheme where the structure all but disappears. Drifts of grasses and architectural perennials were layered to soften a hard urban boundary and carry texture from spring through to the first frost.
A small city courtyard where everything is read at arm's length, so the details had to earn their place. Honed limestone, weathered oak and a fine corten band meet in joints drawn to be looked at, not just stood on.
Imagery on this page is illustrative of the studio's style and materials. It is not a record of completed commissions.
We work in a restrained material language: warm stone, weathered timber, soft metal and planting chosen for tone as much as form. The discipline is in what we leave out. A garden of three or four materials, resolved well, will always outlast one of a dozen.
Every scheme begins as a sample tray on the table before it is ever a quote, so you can hold the garden in your hand before it is in the ground.
Leads the design work, from first brief to the resolved scheme. Trained in landscape architecture, with a leaning toward clean structure, generous planting and gardens that feel inevitable rather than designed.
Leads the build and the studio's craft. A background in fine carpentry and stonework, with the eye for how a detail is actually made that keeps the drawings buildable and the finish honest.
Hartwell & Crane began in 2009 from a simple frustration: the best gardens were the ones where the designer and the builder were the same hand, and almost no one worked that way.
We have kept the studio deliberately small. We take on a measured number of gardens at a time so that each one has both founders across it, from the table to the last plant. It is a slower way to grow, and the right one for the work.
They drew exactly what they then built. There was no moment where the lovely plan turned into a compromise on site. It is still the calmest part of the house.
We were shown the materials before we committed to anything. Holding the stone and the timber together made the whole decision obvious. On time, and on budget.
A small courtyard that we thought was a lost cause. Two years on it has settled beautifully and the planting changes through the year exactly as they said it would.
For the right commission, we travel further into the South-East. Ask us.
Every project starts with a conversation and a walk around the space. Send us a few lines and we will be in touch to arrange the first visit.