Garden design · Chalfont St Peter, Buckinghamshire
Designing social spaces.
I'm Jen Donnelly. I design private gardens across Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Hertfordshire — gardens built around how you actually want to spend time outside. In May 2025 the hospital garden I co-designed with Catherine Gibbon won a Gold Medal at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.
RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2025 · Gold Medal‘Room to Breathe Hospital Garden for the TSA’Co-designed with Catherine Gibbon. Read the story of the garden and where it lives now →
Gold
RHS Chelsea 2025
5.0★
rated on Google
Distinction
London College of Garden Design
Bucks · Berks · Herts
where I work
The idea behind the practice
A garden is worth having only if you're in it.
My work starts from a simple question: what do you actually want to be doing out there? Eating with friends on a summer evening, letting the children loose on the lawn, sitting somewhere quiet with a coffee, or just looking out at something lovely from the kitchen window. Design follows the answer — not the other way round.
That's what 'designing social spaces' means to me. Every layout, level change, path and planting decision is made so the garden earns its keep day to day, right through the year, and keeps giving you more as it matures.
I work on my own, which means the person you meet at the first consultation is the person drawing the plans, choosing every plant and standing in the garden with the contractor when it's being built.
The design service
Six stages. Take as many as you need.
Garden design isn't one lump of work — it's a sequence, and every stage produces something you own and can act on. Some clients take all six. Plenty stop after the outline design and build it themselves.
01
Initial consultation
I come to you and we walk the garden together — how you'd use it, what you love, what irritates you, and what's practically possible.
02
Design proposal & fees
A written proposal covering the brief, scope, timings, my design fees and any third-party costs — agreed before any work starts.
03
Outline design
Layout drawings plus 3D perspectives, so you can stand in the new garden before a single sod is lifted.
04
Construction drawings
Detailed drawings and a written specification, ready for a landscape contractor to price accurately.
05
Planting plans
A planting design for every new area, quotes sourced for plants and trees, and me on site overseeing the planting.
06
Tender process
I run the tender — obtaining, comparing and reviewing landscape contractors' quotes with you.
RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2025 · Gold Medal
‘Room to Breathe’ — a garden for the people sitting beside a hospital bed.
A Container Garden at the 2025 RHS Chelsea Flower Show, co-designed with Catherine Gibbon for The Tuberous Sclerosis Association and sponsored by Taylor Wessing. It won a Gold Medal — and elements of it have since been relocated to Amersham Hospital, Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, which is where the whole idea started.
The story of the gardenGardens
Private gardens, designed and seen through.
A terrace built for sitting out on
A generous sunken seating area in large-format paving, set a step below the surrounding planting so the grasses come up to eye level when you're in the chairs. Clipped evergreen shapes hold the structure through winter; a multi-stem olive gives height without blocking the light.
A lawn that curves you towards the garden room
The lawn is shaped to pull you down the garden rather than let you see it all at once, and the borders either side are planted deep — grasses, alliums, euphorbia and hardy perennials layered so there's something doing its job in every month of the year.
A slope turned into three usable rooms
Brick retaining walls and stone copings take a garden that fell away from the house and turn it into terraces you can actually use: a dining level, planted beds at sitting height, and a pool surround below. This is the sort of thing that lives or dies on the construction drawings.
Planting chosen for the close-up view
Deep crimson cosmos leaning over a gravel edge. Planting plans are usually judged from the kitchen window, but the details you notice walking past — colour against gravel, a flower held on a wiry stem — are what make a border feel considered rather than filled.
In their words
Rated 5.0 on Google.
Pulled live from Jen's Google profile — clients in Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Hertfordshire, in their own words.
“Jenny transformed our front and back gardens… The landscaping and planting is such high quality that it feels magazine worthy. And the driveway no longer floods!!”
“Working with Jen Donnelly Garden Design has been such a lovely experience… Jen has such a gift for choosing the right colours and seasonal planting.”
“Jenny was fantastic from start to finish and really cared about the design of our garden, coming up with some great ideas, spending the time needed to make sure we were happy with the design before proceeding.”
“Great experience working with Jen, extremely thorough and very positive attitude! … Jen produced some amazing CAD type designs to help us decide the best approach and worked with our builders on site.”
How it starts
No surprises, and nothing committed before it's written down.
01
We meet in your garden
An initial consultation on site: how you want to use the space, what you like and can't stand, the practical constraints, and anything that might need planning consent.
02
A written proposal
You get a proposal in writing setting out the brief, the scope of work, timings, my design fees and any third-party costs such as a measured survey — before anything is committed.
03
Drawn, planted, built
Outline design with 3D perspectives, then construction drawings, planting plans, and help running the tender and overseeing planting once the hard landscaping is in.
Where I work
Based in Chalfont St Peter, working across three counties.
Home is Chalfont St Peter, and most of my projects are within easy reach of it — Gerrards Cross, Chalfont St Giles, Amersham, Beaconsfield and the surrounding villages. I also work more widely across Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Hertfordshire. If you're not sure whether you're in reach, just ask.
Thinking about your garden?
Call Jen, or send a few details and she'll come back to you. Monday to Friday, 9am – 5pm.