GARDEN PHILOSOPHY
Great garden designs strike a balance somewhere between sensory experience, lifestyle utility and emotional connection to place and a great garden space should be a place where you feel peaceful, connected with the natural world and can find your sense of bliss. The natural landscapes I create are soft, natural spaces that are full aged organic materials such as natural rock, stone, recycled timber, rusted metals and flowing water giving the gardens I create an immediate sense of maturity. A great natural garden should look as if it has always been there, right from the first day after its construction.
I prefer the use of plants that are fertile and that can freely travel across the garden space through time which includes both local Indigenous, Australian native and some Exotic plants. A garden does not have an end point, and its construction is just the beginning of an evolving process that we shape through time.
INSPIRATION
My work is inspired by the wild natural landscape I have been fortunate enough to explore through years of backcountry ski touring and hiking in remote places. Through my work I draw on these experiences and attempt to translate some of the raw emotion and connection such places evoke into the domestic gardens I build.
I am inspired by the work of other designers both past and present. Locally, I draw inspiration from the gardens of Ellis Stones, Gordon Ford and Edna Walling. Internationally, the works of Fredrick Law Olmstead, Gilles Clement (Garden in Motion), Piet Oudolf, Frank Lloyd Wright and Carlos Scarpa inspire my design thinking.
A SPECIAL THANK YOU
I would like to give a special thank you to all the people I have worked with and who have helped me along my journey to this point in time. Thankyou to my wonderful machine operators Brett C. and Milan N for their hero excavations. Thankyou to Nathan B. for his wonderful hardscape and to Rohan D. for his knowledge of how to care for local Indigenous plants. Your only ever as good as the people you work with. And a special thankyou to the team at Clearwater Agency for their expert digital space knowledge and to Azizul Hoq for his website design and management skills. You are only as good as the people you work with and I have been blessed working with very talented people. Thank you