Eleanor Hartwell MSGD
Founder & Design Director.Trained at the English Gardening School after a first career in architecture. Led the studio's RHS Chelsea Silver-Gilt garden in 2023. Believes every site visit should end with mud on the drawings.
The studio
Fourteen people, one converted dairy, and a very long view.
We measure our work in decades, not seasons. It changes every decision we make: the plants we choose, the way we build, and the way we treat the people we build for.
Our story
It started with a hedge.
In 2010, garden designer Eleanor Hartwell hired landscaper Tom Moss to build a garden she had drawn in Chesham. Halfway through, they fell into an argument about a hornbeam hedge. Eleanor wanted it moved a metre; Tom thought the drawing was wrong in the first place. Tom was right. Eleanor rehired him for the next job, then the one after that.
A year later they registered Hartwell & Moss Ltd and took a lease on a semi-derelict dairy at Mop End, outside Amersham. The founding idea hasn't changed since: the argument about the hedge should happen inside one studio, with designer and builder challenging each other before a spade ever touches your garden, not after.
Today the studio is fourteen strong: four designers, a six-person build team, three horticulturists and Maggie, who runs the office and, by extension, everything else.
People
The studio.
Tom Moss
Founder & Build Director. Third-generation landscaper; apprenticed as a dry-stone waller in the Yorkshire Dales. Runs the build team and the studio workshop. Has opinions about lime mortar and will share them.
Priya Nair
Head of Planting. Ex-Great Dixter, ex-Hillier. Writes every planting plan in the studio and knows the flowering week of roughly two thousand perennials from memory. Runs our meadow programme.
Sam Okonkwo
Senior Designer.Landscape architecture at Sheffield; joined in 2017. Leads our larger rural masterplans and all planning-sensitive work. The studio's quiet diplomat with conservation officers.
Grace Alderton
Horticulturist. RHS Level 3, Wisley-trained. Looks after twenty of our maturing gardens through the seasons and teaches our clients to prune without fear.
Maggie Furlong
Studio Manager.With us since 2013. Schedules the build teams, chases the nurseries, remembers every client's dog by name. The reason the kettle is never cold and the vans are never late.
How we work
Three promises we make every client.
Honesty before beauty
If your budget won't reach your ambitions, we say so at the first meeting, not the last. If a cheaper material will age better, we specify it. A garden built on wishful thinking falls apart; so does a relationship.
The ground rules
We work with the soil you have, not the soil we wish you had. Peat-free always, pesticide-free wherever the garden allows, and every skip weighed against what could be reused on site instead.
We come back
Every garden gets a first-year review at no charge. Most of our clients we still see every season, a decade on. The garden you're promised in the drawings is the garden we stay to deliver.
2011Founded at Mop End
0People in the studio
0National awards
0Gardens under seasonal care
Come and see the dairy.
The kettle is always on and the drawing boards are always out. Visits by appointment, or we'll happily come to you and walk the ground.
Get in touch