The Case for Restraint: Why Less Planting Makes a More Powerful Garden

How intention and process turn an ordinary space into something that endures long after the last plant is placed.

DESIGN

April 28, 2026

There is a moment in every project — usually around the third meeting — when the conversation shifts. It stops being about what the client wants, and starts being about what they need. That distinction is at the heart of every exceptional garden we have ever made at Blooma.

The design brief is not a form to be filled in. It is a living document, a negotiation between aspiration and reality, between the poetic and the practical. Getting it right is, without exaggeration, the single most important thing we do.

The Brief Is Not a Wish List

Most clients arrive with a mood board, a list of plants they love, and a vague sense of what they want the garden to feel like. That is a starting point, not a brief. A real brief asks harder questions: How do you actually use this space? Who uses it and when? What do you want to feel when you walk out of the back door on a Tuesday morning in February?

The difference between a client who says “I want something low-maintenance and contemporary” and one who says “I want a garden that makes me feel unhurried — one that asks nothing of me on a weekday but reveals something new every weekend” is the difference between a project that delivers and one that endures.

“A garden brief is a contract with the future. The decisions you make on paper in March will shape how you live in June — and every June after that.”

— James Hartley, Principal Designer

Five Questions We Always Ask

Over fifteen years of studio practice, we have refined the brief process down to a series of essential questions. These are not tick-box exercises — they are the beginning of a conversation that will continue throughout the project.

1. What does this space mean to you right now?

Not what you want it to become — what it is. A garden’s existing character is always information. Even an overgrown, unloved space is telling you something: about aspect, about soil, about what has survived without attention. Understanding what the space already does well is essential to knowing what to keep.

2. Who else uses this garden, and how?

A couple who entertain formally twice a year has different spatial needs from a family with young children and a dog. Both can have exceptional gardens. But those gardens will not look the same, and they should not. The brief must reflect the reality of daily life, not an aspirational version of it.

3. What is your relationship with maintenance?

This question is more nuanced than it sounds. Many clients say “low maintenance” but mean “I don’t want to do it every day.” Others mean “I want a garden that asks nothing of me ever.” These are very different briefs. The first can support rich, layered planting with seasonal movement. The second demands a fundamentally different palette and structure. We do not judge either position — we simply need to understand it clearly.

4. What is your material instinct?

Do you feel more drawn to the warmth of aged sandstone or the precision of granite sett? To weathered timber or painted steel? These preferences are not arbitrary — they are expressions of how you see the world, and they should inform every hard material decision from the terrace underfoot to the gate at the end of the garden.

5. What is the one thing you would never compromise on?

Every project has a non-negotiable. A generous lawn for the children. A seat in the evening sun. Privacy from a particular neighbour. Finding this single fixed point gives the design its spine. Everything else can flex — but the non-negotiable must be delivered, or the project will always feel like it fell short.

From Brief to Concept

Once the brief is in place, the design team retreats to the studio. We sketch, model, and argue — with each other and with the brief itself. The concept we bring back to the client is not the first idea we had. It is the result of testing that first idea against every constraint the brief has identified, and finding where it holds up and where it needs to be rethought.

The concept presentation is not a reveal. It is a conversation. We expect clients to push back, to question, to say “I love this, but I am not sure about that.” That dialogue is how good design becomes great design. A brief that cannot be challenged is not a brief — it is a contract for a mediocre garden.

What emerges from this process — if the brief was honest and the design was rigorous — is something that feels, when it is finally built, inevitable. Like it could not have been any other way. That is the mark of a legacy garden: not that it impresses, but that it belongs.