This is a garden design for the grounds of the Orleans House Gallery , an arts gallery opened for free to the public by the Richmond Upon Thames Council with a beautiful woodland area around it. My aim with this design was to make the grounds as inspiring as the arts exhibitions so that they could work together to help the visitor to engage in creative thinking – so important in our very fast changing times! In this design, the rich biodiversity brought by the presence of different habitats (meadow, woodland edge and woodland) and sculptural interventions in the land scape (terracing, introduction of reflections through water, directioning of views through design etc) in a curvy layout inspired by the beautiful and touching painting ‘A Lua’ by the brazilian modernist artist Tarsila do Amaral, which evoke the sways of the creative thought, were the drivers for this aim. The design presents itself in a theatrical and grand manner around the beautiful Grade 1 Palladian style building where an area for outdoors sculpture and an amphitheatre for performing arts are present and gets softer and wilder as it moves away from it, where the visitor can experience introspective time in the wooland edge and woodlan boardwalk complete with timber sculpture made insitu by local artists with material from woodland management. Overall, this is a beautiful and inspiring space that completes the art gallery and its thought-provoking exhibitions.

This is a garden design for a family based within the grounds of a Grade 2 Old rectory building from the Georgian Period in Yorkshire. Its layout was inspired by the rectilinear shapes overlayed with curves in Matisse’s Cut-Out series and features a big entertainment area to host summer parties close to a refurbished barn, an area for teenagers to gather away from adults, a beautifully atmospheric woodland edge area and an uplifting area for foraging with edimental plants. The inspiration for the big entertainment area came from the big skies and almost 2D nature of the beautiful North Yoks moors landscapes with its vastness of heathers, which brought me back to the Burle-Marx landscapes in Rio that I grew up with, with its sways of colourful groundcovers with sculptural elements emerging. This then lead to a strong planting scheme where heathers and other evergreen ground covers provide curvy patterns in which plants with a sculptural character such as conifers and grasses apper at points.

This is a garden designed for a young family, with a new baby in Londont. The design inspiration came through a quote from James Joyce’s Ulysees – “Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves.” The design aesthetics was then inspired by church gardens, with its frequently picturesque seating areas, which are very conductive of meditation, introspection and finding oneself. This is garden to support a new life journey, a garden to grow in, a garden where a new life will unfold and discover the world.