What We Do

We are Garden Designers that create innovative garden designs and planting schemes in consultation with our clients to produce gardens of beauty. We also work with schools and community groups developing school grounds and community gardens. Shani Lawrence Garden Designs undertake a wide range of garden design commissions ranging from tiny court gardens to large country garden designs.

Shani Lawrence Garden Designs was originally based in Surrey. We are now based in beautiful West Wales in Pembrokeshire. We often work in Pembrokeshire, Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion. We also work further afield in Wales in Swansea and Cardiff and South East England and are happy to consider commissions all over the UK and abroad.

In addition to this I also run Stones Cottages, an ongoing project to create a retreat centre in North Pembrokeshire. We currently have three holiday cottages and are currently working on landscaping the area and creating wildlife habitats.

RHS Flower Show Hampton Court 2000 Show Garden

History

Shani Lawrence Garden Designs was established by the Garden Designer Shani Lawrence in 1997. Winning a gold medal at Hampton Court Flower Show, and a Silver Guilt at the Cardiff Flower Show.

Shani Lawrence BSc Envi Sci, Cert GD

Shani is an RHS Gold award winning designer with over 20 years of design experience. With a background in environmental science and a love of art Shani passionately believes that our gardens give us the opportunity to create a sanctuary for wildlife as well as for ourselves. Shani’s main interest area is creating gardens that are beneficial to wildlife.

Daniel Jackson BSc Comp. Sci.

Dan is currently taking time out from the design practise due to ill health. Dan is a keen naturalist and photographer.

Nurseries, Landscapers & Gardeners

We work closely with a number of local nurseries, landscapers and gardeners. The gardens we design would not become a reality without their expertise and collaboration on our projects.

Ethos

Shani Lawrence Garden Designs are Garden Designers who create gardens of widely different styles. We have a love of wildlife and are interested in human environmental impact. As well as beautiful and functional, we would like the gardens we design to be encouraging for wildlife, with food sources and shelter for bird life, invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles and small mammals. We feel that gardens are a huge resource in the need to increase and conserve biodiversity, and planting is a strong element of our designs. We encourage organic maintenance of gardens, we buy peat free compost and support water conservation, home vegetable growing, composting and any form of habitat creation. We can not claim to be organic as we buy from general nurseries and garden centres, who in turn source their plants from a wide variety of nurseries. We do try to support nurseries who are peat free or are trying to reduce their dependence on peat and chemicals. We can source peat free and organically grown plants for customers who desire this.

All developments have an impact on the environment, especially the use of hard landscaping materials, whether it be pollution from transportation of materials, problems to the sea bed from dredging, landscape impact from quarrying. We try to be conscious of this and the impact it has. Our gardens are generally not hard landscaping heavy. At the draft design stage, we try to suggest material options with lower environmental impacts. If given the opportunity, we like to use recycled materials, locally sourced and sustainably sourced materials.