Case Study

How Professional Photography & Image SEO Transformed a Garden Design Business

Catriona Rowbotham is a South London based garden designer and Course Director at The English Gardening School in Chelsea. She transforms urban plots and courtyards into calm, liveable spaces. By rebuilding her portfolio for visual search & replacing phone snaps with professional photography, her craft now shines online.

Professional Photography Image SEO Creative Direction Portfolio Optimisation

Deliverables

7 on-site garden photography shoots
Web-ready image exports with sizing & compression
Image naming system and alt text guidance
Portfolio image sequencing & thumbnail selection
Retouching on select images

Project Summary

Client: Catriona Rowbotham — Garden Designer
Focus: Professional garden photography, image curation and image SEO for a garden design portfolio
Platform: Squarespace
My Role: Photography, image curation, web-ready image preparation, alt text and visual search optimisation.
Collaboration: Website design by Gemma Andrews · SEO strategy by 99 Social
Outcome: A visually stronger portfolio supported by professional photography and structured image curation and SEO, helping the designer present her work clearly & improve how projects appear in search.

1 Challenge
2 Approach
3 Photography
4 Image SEO
5 Results

The Challenge

Beautiful Work, Hard to Find

The site showcased strong projects, but images were mostly phone snapshots: flat light, limited dynamic range, and little material texture. Search results reflected that: few thumbnails, low click-throughs, & established competitors owning London’s most valuable terms.

Portfolio images not optimised for search
Phone photos lacked depth, texture, and consistency
Minimal presence in Google Images/thumbnails
Competing with long-established London firms

Before Beautiful portfolio, low search visibility.

Art-directed shoots capturing layered greenery, warm stone, & natural light.

The Approach

Treat Images as the SEO Engine

Seven on-site shoots for depth & materials, then a portfolio rebuild so each project can rank on its own.

Filenames: homeowner-language terms (e.g. georgian-townhouse-garden.jpg).
Alt text: location, style, & elements for accessibility + topical relevance.
Structure: keyword-focused project URLs so styles can earn targeted rankings.

Photography Upgrade

From Flat Phone Snaps to Lived-In, Textural Images

Balanced natural light reveals richer tones and separates layers; shallow depth of field draws the eye to planting.

Before: Phone After: Pro Shoot

Drag to reveal the transformation from phone snapshot to professionally shot image.

Visual Layout

I organised the site’s visual layout & image sequencing

Beyond taking the photographs, I curated how the work is presented on the website. The order, cropping, and rhythm of images help visitors quickly understand the designer’s range & style.

Client site gallery Image order & preview photo selection by Lian Li.

Behind the Shoot

Light, Lenses, & a Clear Story

Natural light windows for warm stone & soft foliage detail.
Focal lengths wides for context; short telephotos for layers & textures.
Shotlist key perspectives, planting layers, lived moments.
Delivery-ready files correctly sized, compressed, & named for the web.
Post-production light retouching & colour calibration; advanced options on request.

On Location Lian Li working behind the scenes during a garden photo shoot in Merton Road. Client: Catriona Rowbotham.

Behind the scenes on location: light scouting, framing, and motion cues. Photos of Lian at work, courtesy of Catriona Rowbotham.

Retouching

Retouching: Distractions Removed

A subtle retouch to remove distracting stacked chairs behind the glass doors, keeping attention on the garden.

Before: Original After: Retouched

Drag to compare: the stacked chairs behind the glass doors are removed in the final retouch.

Let’s work together

Want your garden design to look as good online as it does in real life?

I help garden designers get clear, true-to-life photos and tidy image setup, so the work feels premium, loads fast, & is easier to find in search.

Email about your project Schedule an intro call

Web design projects are available year-round. Garden photography is limited to a small number of projects each year.

Image SEO

Image SEO & file preparation for real-world search

For this project, image SEO was about preparing the photos properly for the website. That meant writing clear alt text, exporting files at the right size, making sure images load quickly. The aim was not to “rank in Google Images,” but to help search engines understand what each photo shows and how it relates to the page.

How people actually search

Most clients don’t begin with a designer’s name. They search by space type, style, planting, or materials.

townhouse garden ideas London
small courtyard garden ideas
front garden ideas no grass
plants for a shady courtyard astrantia heuchera
gravel garden edging ideas steel
low maintenance urban garden planting

Preparing images properly helps search engines connect visual work to these kinds of real-world queries.

Simple rule: if you can describe the photo in one clear sentence, you can name the file and write the alt text.

What we changed on this site

Small technical details that compound across a portfolio.

Filenames: plain English, specific, no camera defaults.
Alt text: honest, visual descriptions aligned with each project.
On-page alignment: captions and surrounding text support what the image shows.
Performance prep: correct sizing and compression for fast loading.

Alt text also improves accessibility, making the work clearer for people who use screen readers as well as search engines.

Image SEO and file preparation in practice: each photo gets a clear description so assistive tech and search engines can understand it properly.

Project Scope

My role in this project focused on the imagery: professional garden photography, preparing images so they were web-ready, and adding clear, descriptive image details so both visitors and search engines could understand what each photo shows.

The website design was created by Gemma Andrews, and the broader SEO strategy was led by the client’s SEO specialist, 99 Social.

“I don’t know any other photographers who combine photography with proper SEO and web-ready file preparation.”

— Catriona Rowbotham, Garden Designer

Example, using a real image on this page

Filename

gravel-garden-steel-edging-london.jpg

Alt text

Steel-edged rectangular planting set into pale gravel with low green groundcover and tiny white flowers.

The wording stays simple, visual, and true to what is in the frame. That is the goal.

The Results

Search Performance You Can See

The combination of professional photography + image SEO increased visual presence in search results and improved rankings across high-intent garden design queries.

“London townhouse garden”

15+

Keywords in the Top 10

25+

Keywords in the Top 20

100%

Results showing image features

Snapshot from an SEO review (Google UK, desktop), checked Oct 2025. Rankings vary by location, device, and time.

Reveal the SEO results (click to expand) Click to view the rankings snapshot and what we changed.

Market domination clusters

London townhouse gardens: multiple first-page positions across related terms.
Period property expertise: 1960s and Georgian townhouse queries showing strong visibility.
Front gardens (biggest opportunity): boundary, no-fence, and no-grass topics ranking and expanding.
Small space specialist: roof terraces and small/tiny garden queries appearing on page one/two.
Boundaries and fencing: planters plus fence/wall queries surfacing consistently.
Professional authority: “garden architecture/design” terms supporting premium positioning.

Why the images mattered

More visual real estate: results repeatedly displayed photos (thumbnails and image packs).
Instant proof: prospects preview quality and style before clicking.
Relevance signals: descriptive filenames and alt text aligned projects to search intent.
Portfolio pages that rank: multiple project URLs earning visibility across keyword groups.

Why It Worked

Visual Business Meets Visual SEO

Compelling thumbnails drive clicks: better lighting and composition lift CTR.
Clearer story, longer dwell: depth and materials keep people exploring.
Technical readiness: correctly sized and compressed files help Core Web Vitals.
Semantic alignment: filenames, alt text, and structure match search intent.

Photography

Garden photography that holds up online

For designers and studios who appreciate the value of imagery that pulls people straight into the garden — you can almost feel the wind, smell the earth, hear the leaves. And the pull is so strong, you want to go there.

I take on a small number of shoots each year.

Garden portraits and finished project shoots
Image libraries for websites, press and presentations
Detail studies and wider views

View photography

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