Acres Wild

Brilliant and beautiful, very tasteful design and construction. Most helpful service, carried out to a high level of satisfaction. I would highly recommend this Company.

I met Debbie Roberts and IanSmith of Acres Wild through Outdoor Creations, the construction company we had chosen for our garden project who we had used in our previous home. We met Debbie and Ian just after we had moved into our Arts and Crafts home in the Surrey Hills. The site was "a grassy ski slope" as described by our daughter and needed turning into a garden. Debbie understood what we required from a garden and the fact that we wanted the garden to feel like it had always been there. She was a pleasure to work with, listened to ideas and interpreted them and I now have a garden which has exceeded all expectations, looks beautiful at all times of the year and works for us as a family. Thank you Debbie. I would have no hesitation in recommending Acres Wild for a similar project or to using them again.

Debbie and Ian have designed two wonderful gardens for us in Surrey: the 'Water and Willows' garden illustrated on these pages and our current garden at Millwater, which won Acres Wild the 'Grand Prize' in the 2014 Society of Garden Designers Awards. Both designs transformed a rough field space into a magical garden with exceptional flow and planting plans which ensured a colourful display from early Spring to late Autumn. I could not recommend them highly enough for both large and small projects.

We first met Ian and Debbie in 2002 to discuss plans for the design of our Surrey garden. It was a difficult sloping site with dry sandy conditions at the top of the garden and a virtual bog on the lower level adjacent to a boundary stream. We found Acres Wild via the Society of Garden Designers and they came to our initial meeting with an extensive portfolio of work. They were keen to fully understand our needs, timescales and budget as well the types of gardens and planting styles that we liked. The process of moving to a masterplan and then detailed construction and planting plans was smooth and enjoyable with much time and effort put into answering our queries and incorporating different suggestions. Acres Wild were also able to put us in touch with contractors to do the hard and soft landscaping work, who provided an exemplary service, and the quality of the plants supplied by Acres Wild was excellent. The garden was completely overhauled with extensive construction required to make the different levels work and to provide different areas for entertaining. Acres Wild were also able to arrange for the work to be carried out in two major phases, the first in 2003 and the second in 2004, and they kept to the agreed budget across both phases. The finished garden is an absolute delight and won an award from BALI for the quality of the work, and has been featured in a number of books and magazines. Although Ian and Debbie have worked on some very prestigious projects and won a number of major awards now, they were more than happy to work on our relatively small project, showing amazing attention to detail and professionalism whilst being very approachable. We have no hesitation in recommending them and their work. Our garden is shown on Acres Wild's Houzz page under 'Form and Foliage'.

Ian and Debbie of Acres Wild were chosen for their design skills, experience and empathy with us as clients. They have a special ability to create strong connections between the house and the garden and the garden with the extended landscape. They have the experience to see more than is in front of them. No project is too big or too small and we have experience of both ranges from our first home with one third of an acre to our present home with a landscaped area of approximately 5 acres sitting in 10 acres of natural woodland. From the creation of the master plan to the detailing of the hard landscaping with three dimensional sketches to the final planting plan, Acres Wild lead you through the exciting emergence of your garden. Ian and Debbie are the perfect partnership for anyone who is looking for something special. If we ever move again, they will be our first phone call.

An Acres Wild garden is a true pleasure, bringing year round colour and interest, beautifully designed in response to its location. At the core of our brief to Debbie and Ian was a new, more imposing entrance, terrace and parking areas to ground our newly reconfigured home. Despite the sloping nature and sometimes difficult aspect of the site our brief was delivered seemingly effortlessly(!) and the new hard landscaping sits very comfortably in its surroundings and cleverly encourages movement around the garden. Working with Debbie the planting plan has been great fun and the garden is rapidly establishing itself, once again very much of its place. We look forward to seeing it evolve further.

Acres Wild - Talented garden designers I can't recommend these guys highly enough. 14 years ago I built a house on a high Wealden site in East Sussex and brought in Acres Wild to design the gardens. Their brief was to make it look like it had been there for ever, even though they basically started with a muddy field. They created a strong structure with a series of garden 'rooms' which became less formal further away from the house, and used heavy planting. They work on the basis of survival of the fittest. Since then the garden has matured and been featured in several magazines. The walled potager, built with 200-year-old bricks, even won a Sussex Heritage Award two years after it was built. If you want a formal knot garden or something very contemporary with water dribbling down a sheet of metal then Ian and Debbie would probably not be your first port of call. But if you want a stunning garden that you'll love to live in then you won't find better garden designers.