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Great Britain runs a plant passport system for regulated plant material, and GOV.UK's guidance is clear about which movements it covers. Plant passports are needed to move regulated plant material within Great Britain, including all plants for planting and certain seeds and wood products, and they are issued by professional operators authorised by the Animal and Plant Health Agency in England and Wales, or by the equivalent authority in Scotland. A UK plant passport carries the botanical name, the operator's registration number, a traceability code for the consignment and the country of origin.

Two everyday situations sit on either side of the line, and the difference surprises people. GOV.UK states that you do not need a plant passport for retail sales where customers pay in person, which is why nothing accompanies the plants you carry out of a garden centre. But if plants are sold through a distance contract, for example online, directly to customers buying for personal use, a plant passport is still needed, and APHA maintains a list of businesses authorised to sell plants by distance contract. A planting scheme ordered from a specialist nursery and delivered to your door is a distance sale, so the consignment should arrive documented.

It is also a point where devolution shows up in a way most homeowners never meet. GOV.UK's guidance distinguishes Great Britain, where UK plant passports apply, from Northern Ireland, where EU plant passports continue, and the passport format carries a part reserved for movements into Northern Ireland. The practical use of all this for a homeowner is small but real: ask a designer where the plants are being sourced from, and treat a supplier who cannot answer questions about traceability as a supplier who may not know what is in the rootballs either.

The British planting calendar is shaped by dormancy and by rainfall rather than by when the design is finished. Bare-root and root-balled stock — hedging, many shrubs and most deciduous trees — is lifted and planted while dormant through the cold months, which is the cheapest and most reliable way to establish a hedge or an avenue. Container-grown plants can technically go in at any time, but planting them into summer means committing to watering them through their first dry spell, which is the commitment most often broken.

That produces a sensible sequence: design through the quieter part of the year, do any hard landscaping and soil preparation first, and plant into the autumn or the dormant season that follows. It also explains a common disappointment. A scheme designed in spring and planted immediately, into warming soil with a dry summer ahead, will need far more watering than one designed in spring and planted at the end of the season, and the difference shows in the second year rather than the first.

Bulbs and seed-grown areas run on their own timetable within that, and a good planting schedule states each group's window rather than leaving the contractor to decide on the day. If the programme forces summer planting, say so in the specification and price the watering rather than hoping for a wet August.

The most common failure is a soil mismatch that was never tested. A scheme drawn for free-draining ground and planted into compacted clay will sulk regardless of how good the plant list is, and no amount of feeding corrects it. The reverse also happens: moisture-lovers specified for a bed that turns out to sit over old hardcore from a demolished shed. Both are cheap to avoid at survey stage and expensive to fix afterwards, which is the argument for digging inspection holes before the plan is drawn rather than after the plants arrive.

The second is impatience with spacing. Schemes look sparse when planted at the density that lets them fill out properly, and the temptation to double up is strong. Three years later the doubled-up version is a thicket in which the weaker half dies and the stronger half is misshapen. The third is a maintenance mismatch — a scheme that assumes twice the attention the household will give it — which shows up as a garden that looked superb for one season and has been slowly simplifying itself ever since.

Substitution is the quiet one. If the schedule is not specific about species, size and form, a supplier short on one item will send the nearest thing, and a scheme built around a particular leaf shape or flowering time loses its point. Ask that substitutions be agreed rather than assumed, and keep the delivery note.

Planting design is priced on the number of beds, the level of detail and whether the designer procures and supervises. What moves a fee is how much of the garden is being designed, whether a soil assessment is included, how detailed the schedule needs to be, whether the plants are specified at nursery sizes or left open, whether the designer sets the plants out on site before planting, and whether any aftercare visits are part of the appointment. A single long border is a modest piece of work; a whole plot with a seasonal succession plan and a supervised planting day is a different commission entirely.

LokalMatch exists to make that first contact easy. Describe the garden once with your postcode, say which beds you want designed and how much maintenance you are willing to take on, and garden designers and planting specialists covering your area get in touch. Homeowners pay nothing for the introduction and the professionals pay for the requests they receive. LokalMatch does not design gardens, supply plants or set prices, and it does not vet, rank or recommend anyone who responds, so checking what is in each fee — and where the plants are being sourced — is yours to do.