Liam & Helen – Baston, Lincolnshire
“We selected Nicola Oakey Design having researched most of the local designers’ websites and after a short telephone conversation with those we shortlisted.
What made Nicola stand out for us was that she clearly understood what we were looking for and gave us confidence that she would be able to come up with the contemporary garden design we were looking for.
Once we had agreed to proceed, Nicola then produced a detailed landscaping plan and planting scheme. All the way through the design and landscaping Nicola worked with us to ensure our garden was what we wanted (not easy during lockdown).
Nicola offers very professional but personal service. She made the process enjoyable and easy to understand for gardening novices. Nothing was too much trouble and she quickly replied to our sometimes daft questions. She has also helped us devise a maintenance plan for the garden so we can keep on top of it.
We would recommend Nicola highly, we are totally delighted with the garden she has created for us and everyone that has seen it has said it looks amazing. We are really looking forward to seeing it grow and develop.”
Mat & Hazel – Haconby, Northamptonshire
“Nicola has the rare ability to translate the disjointed desires of inexperienced gardeners into beautiful designs and ultimately amazing gardens. She was able to transform our unimaginative grass plots into multi-faceted landscapes, with innovative ideas, well-considered planting plans providing year-round interest, through consultative, inclusive design.
Even when, as complete novices, we elected to carry out the hard-landscaping work ourselves, Nicola’s advice and guidance saw us through, with no question ever too daft or trivial. She even spent a day with us laying out and planting, to bring her designs to life.
The transformation of our gardens has been immediate and impressive, and I cannot wait to see how they evolve over the coming years. We would highly recommend Nicola and her creative services to anyone looking to transform their garden.”
Chris & Leah – Tixover, Rutland
“My wife and I always like to use local businesses whenever possible, after many years of living in our current property we wanted to have the garden properly designed, we live on a sloping site down to a river and not being at all green fingered we found Nicola through a local search and she came to visit us to kick start the whole process.
Nicola listened to our ideas, limited as they were, took them away and came back with fantastic designs for our new garden including all the hard landscaping and artistic impressions of the final outcomes. It was way more than we ever anticipated and we immediately moved to the next stage.
We needed a landscaper to help fulfil Nicola’s vision and she helped arrange all of that with a talented landscaping company (Harrison Landscapes), we needed to wait till early 2022 for work to start but in the meantime Nicola worked on planting plans for the different areas of the garden and provided details of all the plants including images so we could see what they looked like.
The landscaping was completed and Nicola arranged all the plants from local nurseries, around 450 I believe and spent a couple of days laying them all out and finally planting them. In the following week a full maintenance guide followed.
In summary, I cannot recommend Nicola highly enough, she is fantastic and we are over the moon with the result. Talented, professional, friendly and with timely responses to even the most basic of queries we had all adds up to a wonderful experience when working with her.”