Our Approach
Beautiful, Balanced Plant Communities
We design gardens that support local ecosystems while maintaining a refined appearance. Our approach creates lush, layered, and densely planted gardens that thrive with minimal maintenance.
Ecological landscape design applies the concepts of plant ecology to classic, timeless garden design principles. A deep understanding of plant behaviour and competition is essential. We carefully consider how different species behave and interact over time both above and below the soil to create balanced, lower-maintenance plant communities.
Our focus is on native plants, which we source from trusted local nurseries including our own micro-nursery. Perennials, shrubs, trees, grasses, sedges, rushes, and ferns are chosen based on careful analysis of your site conditions and micro-climates, ensuring they will thrive.
For each design, we carefully choose plant combinations that will support a rich diversity of wildlife such as native bees, butterflies, moths, dragonflies, hummingbirds, songbirds, and amphibians.
In addition, we consider pleasing combinations of flowers for their colour, shape, and scent as well as plants for their leaf structure, texture, and seasonal colour. Plants of various heights create a layered composition that is both elegant and ecologically sound.
Land Acknowledgement
I acknowledge that the land where I live and work, including the gardens I design and plant, is on the traditional, unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people. I recognize their enduring stewardship of this land, and I am committed to honouring their ongoing relationship with it.
My work is guided by the teachings of Indigenous leaders such as Dr. Jennifer Grenz and Robin Wall Kimmerer, as well as many Māori teachers in Ōtautahi, Aotearoa. I strive to centre Indigenous perspectives on ecological restoration, including the Māori concept of kaitiakitanga.
These approaches honour deep connections between all relations, both natural and human, and seek to bring healing to those relationships through reciprocity and the fostering of mutual reliance.
Ko te oranga taiao, he oranga tangata.
A healthy environment is a healthy people.
“A nature-inspired garden is a collection of beautiful and functional plant species whose very natures are harnessed to create a stylized, interpreted wildness that supports local biodiversity and that works in a more structured home garden.”
— Benjamin Vogt, Prairie Up