Harrogate outdoor living
Hot Tub Garden Planting and Design in Harrogate
Planting and design around a hot tub, from screening and scent to the evergreen structure that carries it through winter. Karen designs and plants the setting. She does not install tubs. Across Harrogate, Knaresborough, Ripon and Nidderdale, 28 years planting Yorkshire gardens. Rated 4.5 from 19 Google reviews.
- 28 yearsGardening since 1998
- NPTCApproved and DBS checked
- BS 3998Tree work standard
- 4.5 from 19Rated on Google
What we do
The tub is the easy part. The garden round it is the job.
Hot tub garden design and planting in Harrogate, and out to Knaresborough, Ripon and Nidderdale. A hot tub turns up on a lorry and is running by teatime. What nobody sorts out is the six feet of garden around it, and that is the part that decides whether you use it twice a summer or three times a week in February.
In a Harrogate garden the first problem is nearly always being overlooked. Town plots are narrow, the houses are tall, and a tub in the middle of one is in plain view of two or three upstairs landing windows before you have even got the lid off. Screening is therefore the whole brief, and it has to work in December when a deciduous hedge has dropped, which rules most of the quick answers out. Up the dale it is the opposite problem: nobody can see you, but the wind can find you, and shelter is what makes the difference between using it and looking at it.
Karen has been planting Yorkshire gardens for 28 years, established 1998, and this is a planting job, not a building job. Karen looks at the space, works out what it needs and plants it. The two things that matter most are privacy, so you are not sat in full view of next door, and having something worth looking at in winter, because that is when you will actually use it. Everything that goes in has to cope with splash and treated water. Somebody else supplies and fits the tub itself. Karen makes the garden around it.
Free visit and a written price. No hard sell.
WhatsApp Karen about the hot tub area Call 07816 779 064
Winter is the point
Planted for the months you will actually use it
Most people use a hot tub on a cold, clear night between November and March. That is the part gardens usually get wrong, because they are planned in June when everything already looks good.
We start with the winter picture instead: evergreens to hold the shape, coloured stems and bark to look at from the water, and a few plants that actually flower in the dark half of the year. The summer planting goes in around that, not instead of it. A scented winter shrub in flower in January, caught on the steam on a cold night, is the best argument for doing it this way.
What customers say
Karen is a gem. After approaching several unsatisfactory firms, we discovered her and found her pleasant and easy to get on with, hard working, imaginative, reliable and very thorough in both the planning and the execution of the scheme. In two days she and her team transformed our incredibly boring garden into a very attractive, low maintenance one. Highly recommended.
Mervyn and Joyce
Customer testimonial, Harrogate
Zones, price and who does what
Every hot tub garden splits into three bands, and getting them right is most of the design. The wet band is roughly the first metre, and it takes splash, treated water and wet feet climbing in and out. The living band is the next two or three metres, where the scent, the seasonal colour and the things you look at from the water all sit. The frame is everything behind that: the screening, the evergreen structure and the trees that stop the whole thing feeling like a plastic box in the middle of a lawn. Plant those three bands with the same list and one of them will always be disappointing. Plant them separately and the space works in January as well as July.
Karen designs and plants. She does not install tubs and she does not build structures. The tub itself, the base it stands on, the electrics, and any cover or shelter over it come from other trades. We are perfectly happy to work alongside whoever you use, and it is far easier if we look at the space before the tub is craned in, because leaving room for a hedge line is straightforward beforehand and awkward afterwards. If the tub is already in, that is not a problem either. Most of this work is planting round an installation that is already sat there.
What it costs comes down to five things: the size of the space, how much screening it needs, the size of plants you want to start with, whether the ground needs improving before anything goes in, and how much clearance there is to do first. Karen comes out, looks at it and puts a fixed price in writing at no charge, with no obligation either way. Hocus Crocus has been going 28 years, established 1998, is NPTC approved, fully insured, DBS checked and IOSH certified, and holds 4.5 stars from 19 Google reviews.
A hot tub setting is usually part of something bigger, so this sits naturally alongside full garden design and makeovers when the whole plot is being reworked, and alongside outdoor bar and BBQ area planting where the tub and the entertaining area share a corner. Screening usually means a hedge, which is hedge planting and cutting, and once it is planted, regular garden maintenance visits keep it looking the way it did on day one. Most of this work is in Harrogate, where the screening problem is sharpest, and we also do it in Knaresborough, Ripon and the Nidderdale villages, and the full patch is on our areas we cover page.
On the tools
What hot tub planting and design covers
Privacy and screening
Sightlines worked out from inside the tub rather than from the kitchen window, then screened with evergreen hedging, multi stem trees or a planted bank so you get privacy without boxing the whole space in.
Evergreen structure for winter
A hot tub gets used hardest when the garden looks worst. Yew, box, pittosporum, phillyrea and hardy ferns hold shape and colour from November through to March, so there is something to look at from the water.
Scented planting near the water
Scented planting set close enough that the warm air and rising steam carry it to you, and far enough back that it is not sat in the splash.
Splash and treated water tolerant choices
The metre nearest the tub takes treated water, so it gets forgiving planting: ornamental grasses and other tough, waxy leaved plants. The soft and the fussy go further out where they will be happy.
Layering for evening light
Planting arranged in tiers with the taller structure set behind, so uplighters and string lights have something to catch. Karen plans the planting around the lighting scheme your electrician installs.
Access, footing and upkeep
Routes in and out kept clear of anything spiny or floppy, leaf drop kept out of the water where it can be, and species chosen so the whole thing stays a light seasonal trim rather than a project.
Karen's planting
The kind of planting that goes round a tub
The hot tub garden at the top of the page is a real Hocus Crocus job. The photographs below show the same standard of planting and water-feature work, from across the district.
Question not answered below? Call Karen on 07816 779 064.
Before you book
Hot tub garden questions we get asked
Do you supply and install the hot tub?
What can you plant right next to a hot tub?
How do I get privacy without losing all the light?
Will it look like anything in winter?
Can you plant around a tub that is already installed?
What does it cost?
Where we work
Covering Harrogate, Knaresborough, Ripon and the whole of Nidderdale.
Karen is based near Knaresborough and works right across Harrogate and its villages, out to Knaresborough and Ripon, and up the whole of Nidderdale. Not on the list? Just ask.
- Harrogate
- Knaresborough
- Ripon
- Killinghall
- Hampsthwaite and Birstwith
- Boroughbridge
- Summerbridge and Dacre Banks
- Pateley Bridge
- Wetherby
Want the space round the tub to feel finished?
Free site visit and an honest written quote, with no obligation. Call Karen on 07816 779 064 or send a photo of the space on WhatsApp.