Mow less. Hear more birds.
Hannah and Rob turn tidy lawns into meadows, dig ponds that dragonflies find in a week, and plant hedges that feed the birds all winter. Gardens across the Stroud valleys since 2014.
Same garden, eighteen months apart
This was a back lawn in Minchinhampton, cut every Saturday for thirty years. We lifted the turf in March, sowed a Cotswold limestone mix, and the first ox-eye daisies came up in June.
Drag the handle to see it change.
What we do
Every job starts with a free hour walking round your garden together. We tell you what's already living there before we suggest changing anything.
Lawn to meadow
from £18 per m²We strip the turf, sow a native seed mix suited to your soil, and look after it for the first two years, when meadows need the most help.
Wildlife pond
from £1,450Clay or liner, shallow beaches for frogs and birds, native marginal plants. No fish, so the dragonflies and newts can move in.
Hedgerow planting
from £24 per metreHawthorn, blackthorn, hazel, dog rose and field maple. Planted in winter, bare root, with a guard for every whip.
Seasonal care
£38 an hourFour to twelve visits a year. Cutting meadows at the right time, pond clearing in autumn, and leaving the seed heads up for the finches.
From the field notebook
What turns up when you stop mowing.
41 bee species
counted across our clients' gardens last summer by the Stroud Pollinator Survey.
Common darters by week three
in most of the ponds we dug in 2025. Broad-bodied chasers followed in July.
Poppies in year one
come up first from the seed bank. The slower perennials take over by the second summer.
A garden is the one thing you can buy that gets better every year.
Through the year
Winter
Hedges and trees go in bare root. We plan new meadows and dig ponds while the ground is soft.
Spring
Sowing, plug planting, and the first cut on new meadows to help the slow growers.
Summer
We mostly leave things alone. Then the main hay cut in late August, raked off so the soil stays poor.
Autumn
Yellow rattle goes in to weaken the grass. Ponds get half cleared, never all at once.
Hannah Rees and Rob Pell
Hannah trained at Kew and spent eight years with the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust. Rob was a dry stone waller before he could drive. They do every job themselves, with two seasonal helpers in summer.
Gardens we've changed
“We had a perfect striped lawn and nothing ever landed on it. Two summers later the grandchildren lie in the long grass counting butterflies, and I haven't started the mower once.”
Judith and Peter A.
Painswick
“Rob dug our pond in October. In April we had frogspawn. My daughter checks it every morning before school.”
Kemi O.
Nailsworth
“Hannah talked us out of half of what we asked for and it was the right call.”
Steve L.
Stroud
Book a garden walk
An hour in your garden with Hannah, free within ten miles of Stroud. You'll get a written plan and a price a week later.
- Yard and nursery
- Brimscombe Port, Stroud GL5 2QG
- Office hours
- Monday to Friday, 8:00 to 4:00
- Where we work
- Stroud, Nailsworth, Painswick, Minchinhampton, Bisley and the Five Valleys
- Booked up until
- Late March for new projects. Garden walks within a fortnight.