Twelve years of doing it properly.
Elder & Stone started with one designer who was tired of watching corners get cut. Here's the story, and the team who now build every garden.
Tom Elder didn't set out
to run a company.
He trained through the RHS, then spent the best part of a decade working for one of the bigger landscaping contractors in the region — good design work, but the build side told a different story. Sub-bases got thinned out when a job ran behind. Drainage got "sorted later." Snagging lists got quietly shortened before handover.
"If the sub-base is wrong, nothing above it matters. You can lay the nicest sandstone in Hampshire on top of a bad foundation and it'll still crack by year three."— Tom Elder
In 2014 he went out on his own, with a simple rule: build it the way you'd want it built for your own garden, even if that means charging more or taking longer to get it done. Elder & Stone grew slowly on the back of that — first as a one-man design practice, then taking on hardscaping directly in 2016 once he'd found tradespeople who worked the same way he did.
See what we do→The last twelve years.
Elder & Stone founded
Tom Elder goes independent as a design-only practice, working out of a van and a spare room in Romsey.
First hardscaping-only projects
Previously planting and design only — Elder & Stone starts taking on patios, paths and walling directly, with its own crew rather than referring the build out.
Priya joins as Head Gardener
Maintenance care plans launch so finished gardens keep looking the way they did on handover day, not just for one summer.
200th project milestone
Two hundred Hampshire gardens designed or built, from small courtyards to estate-scale redesigns.
Team grows to four specialists
Connor and Freya join, rounding out dedicated hard landscaping and planting specialisms alongside Tom and Priya.
Today
Still a small, hands-on team — still doing the sub-base properly.
Four people, one standard.
Tom Elder
Founder & Garden Designer
RHS-trained, still does every first consultation himself. Keeps a battered site notebook instead of a tablet — says he thinks better with a pencil.
Priya Nair
Head Gardener
Runs the maintenance side and knows most of our clients' gardens better than they do. Can identify a plant disease from ten paces and won't let you forget it.
Connor Reilly
Hard Landscaping Foreman
Patios, paths, walling, drainage — the parts that fail first if they're done wrong. Has been known to dig a test pit on a first site visit just to check what's underneath.
Freya Osei
Planting Specialist
Border design and plant sourcing. Grew up helping out at her nan's allotment and still can't walk past a garden centre without going in "just to look."
Three things we don't compromise on.
We quote what it actually costs
No deliberately low first number to win the job, then a longer list of "extras" once the digger's on site.
We don't subcontract the parts that matter
Design, hardscaping and planting are all done by our own team. If something goes wrong, there's one company to call.
We tell you if an idea won't work
A striking Pinterest photo doesn't always suit your soil, aspect or budget — we'd rather say so at the design stage than after it's built.
Talk to the team who'll actually build it.
Tell us about your garden and we'll get back to you with honest advice and a fixed quote.