About the studio
One studio, from first line to last stone
Verdant & Co. is a landscape design-build studio in the Alderbrook Valley. We draw gardens, build them with our own crews and look after them for years. Since 2009, one idea: no hand-offs.
Why we started
Margot Ellison spent ten years drawing gardens for other people to build. Too often, the drawing and the finished garden did not match. A wall moved, a tree was swapped, a drain was skipped. Nobody was quite at fault. The plan simply passed through too many hands.
In 2009 she started Verdant & Co. to close that gap. The studio that draws your garden also prices it, builds it with its own crews, and comes back every season to look after it. One team carries the idea from the first pencil line to the last laid stone.
We have stayed small on purpose. We work within about forty minutes of the studio, take on a limited number of builds each year, and keep the same faces on every project. It is slower growth, and it is why our gardens still look like their drawings.
“A garden should look more like its drawing in year ten than on the day we hand it over.”
140+
Gardens designed & built
17
Seasons in the valley
2-yr
Plant guarantee, 5-yr stone
1
Studio: design, build & care
Seventeen seasons, briefly
-
2009
A drawing table in a potting shed
Margot Ellison opens Verdant & Co. in a rented potting shed in Alderbrook, with one truck and a drafting table.
-
2012
Our first build crew
We stop handing our drawings to other contractors. The people who draw the garden now work beside the people who build it.
-
2015
The stone crew
Daniel Osei joins and starts our masonry crew. Granite setts and dry-laid walls become the studio's signature.
-
2018
Gardenkeeping begins
Clients ask who will look after the gardens we built. Our answer is a horticulturist-led care team that knows each garden by name.
-
2021
The Glasshouse Studio
We move into the long glasshouse on Quarry Lane, with drawing tables at one end and a stone and plant yard out back.
-
2026
Seventeen seasons on
More than 140 gardens designed and built, still within about forty minutes of the studio, on purpose.
Four things we won't compromise
01
Draw it before you dig it
Every decision is cheaper on paper. We solve gardens at the drawing board, so the build is careful work, not guesswork.
02
The money is underground
Bases, drainage and soil preparation are the hidden sixty percent. They are why the visible forty percent stays right for decades.
03
Plant for year ten
We plant smaller, better stock in better soil and guarantee it for two seasons. Gardens are judged in decades, not at handover.
04
You still live here
A tidy site every Friday, honest weekly reports, and neighbours who get a note before the excavator arrives.
The people
Eight people you'll actually meet
Designers, a build director, a master mason, horticulturists and the person who answers the phone. Plus fourteen field people across two crews, most of them here five seasons or more.
- Margot Ellison Principal & Design Director
- Tomás Herrera Build Director
- Sofia Marchetti Head of Horticulture
Where we work
The valley, and not much further
We build within about forty minutes of the Glasshouse Studio, so our crews and gardenkeepers can reach every garden we've made.
See the service area- Alderbrook Home base
- Kestrel Hill About 15 min
- Harrow Point About 20 min
- Fernway About 20 min
- Old Quarry About 25 min
- Milburn Heights About 30 min
- Oakhampton About 35 min
- Bright River About 40 min
Begin here
Meet a principal designer on your own ground
Ninety unhurried minutes with a principal designer. Honest budget bands, no obligation, and a written summary either way.