What we do
We believe that well designed and managed landscapes can have a host of ecological and social benefits. We work towards creating landscaping interventions that are beautiful and productive, while supporting our local ecology.
We adopt an ecological design lens for our work with a focus on organic food producing systems, indigenous gardens and sustainable water management interventions.
What is ecological design?
Ecological design is an approach to landscape design, installation and management that takes ecological processes and the relationships between people and nature into account.
By focusing on the natural ecology of a site and the interconnectivity between the living and nonliving things we create landscaped systems that conserve natural resources, improve biodiversity and result in aesthetic and functional landscapes for all.
With proper design and implementation, healthy patterns can begin to form which improve the relations between each component in the system, resulting in a landscape that is interconnected and sustainable.
Our process
We draw on methods and techniques inspired by ecological landscaping principles, permaculture design, whole systems thinking and pragmatism to create functional landscapes for people and the planet. Our designs add beauty, diversity and abundance through the use of indigenous flora, food producing systems and sustainable water management.
Our design process is structured yet flexible and tailored to the needs and expectations of our clients. We provide a full design and landscaping service from conceptualisation and brainstorming to project specification and implementation.
Our work
We are passionate about the following design elements and can integrate them into our designs as a full system or as a single element in a design.
Indigenous gardens
Our indigenous flora is rich in form and texture, providing us with a palette to create aesthetically exquisite gardens. Planting indigenous and where applicable, endemic, is also a low maintenance way of supporting the surrounding ecology by adding flora that local wildlife rely on and have adapted to. Where context allows, our Western Cape fynbos gives us a large diversity of different perennials, annuals, grasses, reeds and succulents, that allow a rich array of colour and interest all through the year.
Sustainable water management
Water underpins all productive landscapes and sustainable water management is critical for our landscapes to thrive into the future. Through a range of interventions from water gardens and bioswales to raintanks, greywater systems and water features, we prioritise managing water on our sites in a way that is efficient, effective and functional.
Food-scaping
Our team loves growing our own food and believe a food garden is possible for everyone. Whether it is a few square metres or a small scale farm, we design, install and educate on a variety of styles of vegetable gardens, as well as food forests, organic orchards and other food producing systems. For more on some of our food gardening offerings, click here
Education
We strongly believe in the importance of education in improving people’s relationships with nature and each other. Embedded in our work is a desire to learn together with clients, garden workers and families to better understand natural systems and how we can best tend to them for healthy and productive local ecologies.
