I never understood why people don't build their conservatory for year round use. It's all about light and heat control. Automatic sun reflective shades along the roof windows will keep the room from overheating in the summer and even help keep it warm in the winter. Proper wall and ceiling insulation, double or gas permeated triple glazing will keep it comfortable year around with the right heating. Add a wee wood stove in a corner with a simply pipe chimney and you have yourself a lovely winter sun room to brighten your cold winter days. If you live where there is snow, even better. It'll feel like a wee slice of paradise.

What a great picture, and a design that could easily be adjusted for your site, in terms of both hard landscaping and soft landscaping for a Cheshire site. The elements of slabs, wooden boards, rendered walls, low hidden water feature and lush low-maintenance planting can be achieved on a small budget. Water features surprisingly cost quite a bit, even a simple rill such as in the picture with small bubbling jets and lighting. To keep the cost down, you could look for concrete slabs, and use a softer wood and then stain it to the colour you want, rather than going for an expensive Iroko wooden board. Of course, once you start staining you will need a regular care schedule of cleaning it and re-staining it. Perhaps if the budget will allow, you could spend more on say composite decking boards and a stylish piece of furniture, and then use cheaper products elsewhere. A good Internet search will reveal some great products, but don't get carried away. Stick to your idea of how the garden should look and be strict with yourself. Failing that, appoint a garden designer. Regards Mark

Of course. The dimensions would depend on the size of the fireplace/burner you would be going for. The opening would have to be made of non-flammable material, such as brick, stone, metal, porcelain tiles, Vermiculite Board, etc. You could use non-flammable paint over that. For example, our freestanding baskets like the one Richard posted above need 60 cm clearance from the bottom to the top; or if you wanted a contemporary line of fire look you could go for our Regulating Bio Containers like the one in the photo below - all required dimensions are available in the brochure with building advice on our website. We hope that helps :) Good luck with the project!

Typically a garden designer will be creating the design, helping with the setting out of the plan and overseeing the project. Working in the same manner as an architect might work. You wouldn't expect to find an architect laying the bricks for a house they had designed.... If I was building every garden I design myself then I would only be able to work on half a dozen gardens a year. I have built many gardens which I designed but there are other professionals who are faster and better at laying slabs, erecting pergolas etc. There is far more to know about design than most people imagine. If you are going to pay for a design service you don't really want a jack of all trades, do you? Having said that garden designers are often very passionate about the spaces they are creating, so they may choose to get involved in certain aspects of the build, usually the planting. It is not unreasonable perhaps to expect your garden designer to be a good gardener. With a garden build there may be specialist areas. An obvious thing is that an electrician will be getting the lighting installed but certain surfaces or timber work might be best done by a company who specialises in it (like say polished concrete). On a house build the people doing the roof are trained in roofing and that is probably all that they do. With gardens there does tend to be a view that somebody should be doing everything, but I don't think that there is much reasoning to that. Clients do tend to favor design and build companies, however sometimes this can mean being subject to some bias. Some design and build companies have particular deals with suppliers and always use the same materials or products in their projects. That's OK if the client is aware of this but maybe they would have liked or enjoyed some other element in the garden if the money had not gone on that? Neither the design nor the building of gardens is a regulated industry in the UK so I would say that it is best to go and see a project that any professional you are planning to work with has done. It is very mixed industry with people in all areas of it sometimes being self-taught and other times having lots of paperwork - either of them could be more masterful than the other, the only way to know is to look.