As you venture into the garden for a long-anticipated barbecue during one of the short bursts of sunshine, what do you see? Cracked paving slabs, dodgy flower beds and wobbly pergolas?

If you do, it might be time to call in the experts. Thankfully, one of Ash’s most popular landscaping companies is here to help.

AGM Landscaping, run by Richard Moyse, has helped thousands of people get their gardens into shape since it started in 1976.

The company takes on all types of gardens, big or small. Over the years, it has won awards for its creations and has even built a lake.

When designing a garden, Richard has to take lots of things into consideration.

“I really enjoy the process of designing a garden,” he said. “You have to think about whether they have a family, what they’re using the garden for and their budget.

“You have to make sure the design is in keeping with the style of the house — it’s important that the garden doesn’t just look like it’s stuck on to the side of the building.

“After meeting with the client I will go away and create a design. Everybody has different tastes and I do my best to accommodate them. We can normally do anything they want. The only constraints we have are technical ones.”

AGM Landscaping has 14 staff at its offices in Ash. It has two designers and the rest are administration staff and gardeners, whose job it is to turn Richard’s ideas into reality.

“I stay in close contact with the customers throughout the job,” said Richard. “It is really satisfying to see the design through to the end and see it finally finished.”

Their biggest — and Richard’s favourite, project to date — was creating a huge artificial lake at Puttenham.

“The client bought the land to prevent someone building on it and so we built him an artificial lake” he said. “It looks pretty natural by now.”

AGM also does a lot of work for well-known local gardeners Robin Templar Williams and Moira Farnham and has won two British Association of Landscape Industries awards.

One was for a garden in Newbury that has a feature stone fountain and the other was for landscaping the gardens of a retirement village at Mytchett.

AGM was started by friends Andrew Munford, Gordon Andrews and Malcolm Henson in 1976 — hence the name.

Richard joined them when he left Merrist Wood College, where he studied landscape construction, in 1978.

“We have had good and bad times over the years, but we have seen it through,” he said.

“We ran a nursery in Badshot Lea until 1989, but then the crash hit and we were forced to move to where we are now and focus fully on doing domestic gardens.”

Richard and Andrew took over the company from the other partners and ran it together before Andrew’s death from cancer two years ago. Now Richard runs AGM with Andrew’s wife Elaine.

Over the years, Richard has seen many trends come and go, but by far the worst, he says, is decking.

“It has its uses but mainly should just be put in the skip,” he said. “It just isn’t suited to the British climate and will quickly warp.

“To improve your garden, my main advice is don’t try and do it on the cheap. If you are short of money, focus on a small part, rather than the whole thing. Planting can also make a huge difference.”

For more information, visit www.agmlandscaping.co.uk or call 01252 313306.