Whatever size of garden you have, it can be tricky to feel on top of things. There's plenty of pressure to make the most of your space, but you fear getting it wrong and ending up with a messy, inconsistent or difficult to maintain garden. That's where a professional landscaping firm comes in.

A good firm will be very flexible in its approach to landscaping. It will advise you on possible options but let you have the final say because, after all, it's your garden and you literally have to live with it! Such a firm will have its own areas of expertise, but won't try to be a jack of all trades: instead it will have used its strong reputation to partner up with specialist firms for any unusual extra services you require. And best of all, a reputable firm will take care of all the cleaning up and remove all unused materials that you don't want or need.

A landscaping firm can also help you choose plants and features which will be easy to maintain all year round. A common mistake green-fingered amateurs make is to design their own garden which looks ideal in the summer months when they work on it, but winds up looking either cluttered or bare at other times of the year as plants go through their seasonal cycles.

If you choose a good firm, you'll be able to relax in the knowledge that it will help design and produce the garden that's right for you, not one that simply boosts its profits. A less skilled operator may be tempted to sell you on as many costly designs and features as possible to boost its revenues, producing results which are so overbearing that they lose their effectiveness and stop your garden being a haven of tranquillity. To avoid this problem, look for firms which have a wide portfolio of their previous work available for you to look through. You should also look for firms which can offer testimonials from customers.

Using a landscaping firm can add thousands to the value of your home. A 2008 survey for the Yorkshire Bank found that a garden overhaul added an average 9,000 GBP to property values, and that figure is higher in the South. In this age of property programming filling the TV schedules, a great looking garden is a much rarer improvement than the now-common re-fitted kitchen or decorated bathroom.