Elizabeth Ellis
I believe the best gardens create a sense of belonging—for people as much as for place. A garden is an extension of home: somewhere to spend time, mark the seasons and connect with the world beyond our walls. The best gardens are shaped as much by the lives lived within them as by the landscape beyond them. Every place has its own character. By understanding that character—and designing with it rather than imposing upon it—I aim to create gardens that are beautiful, enduring and deeply connected to where they are. Gardens that feel as though they have always belonged.
Biography:
I am a garden designer with a background in branding and graphic design. Over more than twenty years, I have worked with some of the world’s leading branding agencies, co-founded Counter Studio and the typographic workshop The Counter Press, and have received awards from D&AD, Creative Review and the International Society of Typographic Designers. I graduated with Distinction from the London College of Garden Design in 2026. While the discipline has changed, my approach has not: understanding the unique character of a place, the relationships that shape it, and translating those insights into thoughtful, carefully crafted design.
Instagram: @studio.elizabeth.ellis
Hidden down an unassuming lane on the outskirts of Bath, this Grade I listed Jacobean manor has lived many lives: family home, spiritual retreat, commercial printing works and children’s care centre. Although much of the formal garden has disappeared, its character remains, revealed through overgrown topiary, fragments of walls and the ghost of a sunken croquet lawn.
The challenge was not to recreate the past, but to understand what should be carried forward. Now home once again to a family and an active private press, the garden needed to honour its history while supporting contemporary life.
The masterplan reconnects the estate through a series of purposeful interventions, restoring relationships with water, re-establishing productive landscapes and creating spaces for family life, craftsmanship and community to coexist. Inspired in part by the expressive typography of Alan Kitching, the design moves from the structured gardens close to the house into a looser, more natural landscape beyond.
Rather than preserving the site as it was, the project gives it renewed life. Historic traces become the foundation for new traditions, ensuring the garden continues to evolve while remaining deeply rooted in its place.
Set between the rolling Yorkshire Dales and the rugged North York Moors, The Old Rectory is an elegant 18th-century home beside the village church. In the grounds, an old barn, remnants of ruined walls and scattered stone structures are reminders of an earlier life as a busy farmstead.
The garden had retained traces of this history, but over time its spaces had become fragmented and disconnected from the house. A tall dividing wall cuts through the centre, while the lack of direct access from the house meant the garden had become increasingly separate from family life.
The challenge was to reconnect the garden without losing the character created by its divisions and ruins. Drawing inspiration from the nearby ruins of Rievaulx Abbey, the masterplan uses these existing structures as the framework for a series of distinct spaces, each with its own role in family life. Formal pathways bring order and connection, while the planting becomes progressively looser around the central ruin.
At the heart of the garden, the remains of an old barn become its defining feature: a place where the sense of history is strongest, but where new planting and pathways bring energy and life. Around it, spaces for gathering, playing, retreating and simply being outside give the garden a new rhythm.
Where the garden once felt disconnected, its divisions now give each space a distinct purpose while creating a stronger connection to the house and the life within it. The result is a garden that feels secluded from the world beyond its boundaries, yet entirely connected to the family who live there.
