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Emma Crow Garden Design

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Emma Crow Garden Design

Emma Crow Garden Design offers bespoke garden design and landscaping services in West Devon and East Cornwall.

From planting plans to full garden transformations — bringing beauty and function to outdoor spaces.

04/09/2026

A fabulous, annual meadow in Roscoff, whilst on holiday in France. This meadow was growing practically on the beach, almost in pure sand! The effect is breathtaking. Nutrient-depleted soil is stunting these plants to a height barely reaching our knees, and they're flowering like there's no tomorrow! Californian poppies, which we're so used to seeing flopping verdantly across our borders, are almost unrecognisable as spindly, upright plants, giving it their all to produce flowers. These plants are under stress, and their survival mechanism has kicked in. They're busy producing as much seed as possible in the hope that large numbers of offspring might see the species through into next year.

This is such a wonderful mix - there's red poppy (Papaver rhoeas), dwarf cosmos varieties, californian poppy (orange flowers), yellow corn marigold ( Glebiolis segetum) and a vibrant mix of cornflowers (Centaurea cyanus) ranging from dark blue to pastel shades of lilac and mauve. Also in here is flax, and not the usual blue variety that we sometimes see growing near our birdfeeders, or as field escapes. This is Linum grandiflorum, the rich, red flowers so prominent in this mix. Also, a new one to me, Linum grandiflorum Bright Eyes, those gorgeous, eye-catching salmon pink flowers with blood red centres.

15/08/2026

I've just had a lovely afternoon with a couple who's garden I designed last year, skillfully constructed by John Murrain and his team.

The garden has such a lovely vibe. It is one thing having a good framework for your garden, but it is what you do with it afterwards that brings it alive with character and vitality. Helen has injected her passion for nature and nurture in such a way you can positively feel it around you. Carefully nurturing plants that will feed wildlife - embracing every newcomer; having specific plants and special objects that tell a story, bringing her family and memories close to her in her happy place.

04/08/2026

An update on the colourful herbaceous borders in a garden near Tavistock. Incredible to think these were planted just three months ago!

26/07/2026

A new-build garden in Tavistock

Quite a view from the sitting room. Rock-filled, gabion baskets, stacked to a height of 4 metres!

I had the privilege of being asked to design a garden which would improve this imposing outlook.

My philosophy, when presented with a feature that seems at first overwhelming, is to focus on the space around it, or in this case, in front of it. If there's enough interest to feed the eye, the gabion baskets will take a background role - and with a bit of thought, might even enhance the garden!

Construction is currently underway ,with John Murrain and sons at the helm. A pergola provides vertical interest. It covers a walkway, designed to invite its owner to amble through her garden, settle for a while on a bench looking out towards a hidden area behind the garage, not visible from the house. This could quite easily become a non-descript storage area, but I plan to enhance this little nook with planting and make it a feature.

Look out for my post later in the year when I plant up this garden!

14/07/2026

Low-maintenance planting infront of a summerhouse.

An arrangement of beds I designed last year, now planted and currently burgeoning!. Four beds surround a central, circular one which has a sundial, and a path which passes through the middle, leading to the summerhouse.

The beds needed to be vibrant and striking during the summer months when the summerhouse will be most in use. Hard-working, herbaceous perennials, reliably flowering their hearts out during the summer months came to mind. The beds also need to be low maintenance, something which herbaceous borders definitely are not!

To keep maintenance to a minimum, I limited beds to 2 or 3 different varieties - ones which are reliably self-supporting. Planting with a high density should help to block out the weeds. Having them all coming into flower together ensures a full-on fantastic display during the second half of the summer. At the end of the season, a strimmer can quickly clear the beds in one fell swoop. No need for individual dead-heading, pruning, staking and all the hours of individual attention a herbaceous border normally requires.

The summerhouse has fabulous views across the Devon countryside. So as not to obscure the view, I also had to make sure that two of the beds had plants no taller than around 60 centimeters.

There was definitely quite a bit to think about!

30/06/2026

Tropical Garden in Tavistock

A small, tropical garden I planted some years ago. I visited it last week to give it a quick nip and tuck!

25/06/2026

Steps
A little while ago I was asked to design some garden steps. There's quite a lot to think about - the height and number of steps required, the angle of turns, where best to place the the turns, and how the retaining wall on either side is going to work. It's also a wonderful opportunity to get creative, and make them a strong feature in the garden, and not just a means of getting from A to B.

Looking back at steps I've designed over the years, it's fairly obvious I'm partial to curved ones! Curves invite and guide the visitor, funnelling in a certain direction, opening out to allow a choice of routes on arrival. The steps become an important and integral part of the whole garden experience.

(Hard landscaping thanks to John Murrain and Phil Wheldon)

17/06/2026

This week, I re-visited a small back-garden I designed last year, skillfully constructed byJohn Murrain and his team, now ready for planting.

Tired of her small, rectangular patch of grass and strip of paving, my client was craving a garden which was a joy to look out onto, and more importantly, a pleasure to be in.

The design I brought to her was simple and crisp. Working to a budget, I tried to incorporate as much of the existing good bits of the garden as I could. Once jet-washed, we found the paving slabs to be attractive, good quality stone. It wasn't too difficult to find a close match, enabling a more interesting shape to the paved area. The lawn was taken up, and instead, a circular, slab-edged bed set in gravel - gone are those pointless mowing days! The pergola provides a welcome, designated area in the sun for relaxing and socialising with family and friends.

A good, solid structure to this garden, just waiting to be dressed and brought to life!

01/06/2026

Planting courtyard borders in a garden near Lamerton.

I was looking for a Mediterranean feel to the courtyard area of this garden. In the four corner borders, some large, randomly placed rocks help to give the rugged look I'm after. I planted lavender right next to them, in gaps to make it look as if they had naturally chosen to make their home there. I'm hoping the shelter and warmth offered by the rocks will also help them through the winter.

I really wanted to have instant impact for these borders. Not always easy when the young plants have just gone into the ground, looking like characterless dots on a sea of brown soil. So in October, I planted various different types of allium bulbs which together, will provide pom-pom shaped flowers almost throughout the summer.

This serms to have worked really well, giving instant height. Even the allium leaves, albeit a bit leeky in nature, add interest. Just a case of removing them as they yellow to keep the border looking vibrant. The bees are really enjoying the necter-rich flowers, adding to the feeling that these borders must surely have been here longer than a couple of weeks!

24/05/2026

Gnomes

Over the years I've seen just how important garden gnomes can be to their owners. And other characters too, sometimes inherited when taking on a new garden, or from a family member; and another, it's owner strangely drawn to him when she saw him at an auction. So I was really happy that this year, the Chelsea Flower Show has finally raised the ban on gnomes!

When we adopted our own garden twenty five years ago, we inherited a motley crew of gnomes. Our town garden is small, and every inch important, so I just wasn't sure whether I could spare any space for them. However, I couldn't quite turf them out, feeling that really, this was their garden as much as ours.

They're now cloaked in moss, but in days gone by, they were once brightly coloured. One sits astride a stool and another is hammering a horseshoe over an anvil. We also have a couple of frogs.

Turns out, these characters have a history. A previous owner of our house was a prison officer up at Princetown back in the sixties. Forty years on, we visited the prison museum and to our surprise, there they were, for sale, gnomes and frogs exactly the same as the ones in our garden. The very moulds that created our gnomes around forty years, still in use!

There is also in our garden, a terrier made of lead who likely predates our gnomes. He was probably painted when he started out life, but he sports the mature, silver look equally well!

Then there is the delightful community, established a few years ago next to the waterfall along the Tavistock viaduct walk. The photo was taken a couple of years ago, and the thriving population has since dwindled a bit!

Address

Tavistock

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 5pm
Thursday	9am - 5pm
Friday	9am - 5pm

Website

http://ecrowgardendesign.com/

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