Grounded in this land,
designed for life.
Naturescapes Canberra acknowledges the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples as the traditional custodians of the land on which we live and work, and we pay our deepest respects to their elders past and present. We strive to honour their ancient and ongoing custodianship of this region through our land management practices, and are dedicated to a future of regeneration and reconciliation.
This always was, and always will be, Aboriginal land.
We create naturalistic gardens that hum with life and foster a deeper connection to place.
Gardens are most valuable when they are an integral part of our everyday lives – a well-designed garden will draw you outside, encouraging you to live life a little closer to nature. While the functionality of the ecosystems we create is incredibly important, so are the humans who inhabit the space; we will tailor your design to suit you and enhance your lifestyle.
Our gardens bring a sense of enduring beauty, wonder, and joy to the everyday lives of Canberrans, whilst increasing backyard biodiversity and reconnecting wildlife communities. Our gardens passively rehydrate landscapes, increasing resilience and allowing them to thrive into the future.
Whether you dream of a moment of solitude watching ripples move across your pond, or imagine time with family and friends surrounded by the calls of Eastern Spinebills, we want to help you create a habitat garden that will be a sanctuary for you and for the creatures who share your space.
Services
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The perfect place to start or continue your gardening journey, a consultation allows you to share hopes for your garden and receive our initial impressions on the creative and practical potential of the site.
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We will tailor our design services to your goals and budget, from a small area of the garden up to the whole block, and from a basic scaled layout of the main garden areas through to highly detailed 3D plans.
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We believe that what differentiates us is our breadth of knowledge and experience. While our grounding is in traditional landscaping and horticulture, it is our deep shared love and understanding of the physical and ecological processes in the wider landscape which helps us to bring a sympathetic eye for detail and create a naturalistic feel in our gardens.
Budget a bit tight but determined to get started on your dream garden? Please get in touch to discuss ways we can assist you to turn your design into a reality.
Our design focus
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Bring water into your garden and watch as your space comes to life. Ponds, creeks, waterfalls, and wetlands will instantly enhance biodiversity in your garden, becoming havens for birds, beneficial insects, amphibians, and people. Our aquatic landscapes could be small enough for a courtyard garden, or large enough to include a natural swimming pool.
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Whether you dream of a soft, textural meadow rich with local wildflowers, a grassy woodland, a verdant temperate rainforest, or a dense riot of colourful and layered shrubs, we can design you a garden that is as beautiful and restful as it is biodiverse and ecologically complex.
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We believe in designing resilient gardens for a changing climate.
Urban blocks consist of a vast area of roof-space - the majority of water falling on our roofs rushes off our properties and heads straight for the stormwater drain. We are passionate about rehydrating our landscape and include passive water harvesting in our gardens at every opportunity.
There's a variety of ways we design gardens to slow this water and allow it to soak into the landscape, in turn supporting a diversity of garden types and ecosystems. As a bonus, we're able to clean up our city's water and reduce the pressure on our stormwater systems.
We incorporate swales, utilise run-off from hard surfaces, redirect water from down-pipes, and create rain gardens. This not only increases climate resilience and plant health but also decreases reliance on mains water, as well as minimising time spent on the end of the garden hose.
We choose plants based on biodiversity, beauty, and resilience to a changing climate, essential to minimising excess water usage. Should irrigation be required, installing a drip irrigation system is an efficient way to water the garden by minimising water loss due to evaporation.
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We use permaculture principles to design edible gardens and food forests that are practical and abundant.
We are able to provide you with a good working knowledge of soil health, including increasing soil organic matter and remineralisation, to ensure the fruit and vegetables you grow will be nutrient-dense and plentiful.
People
Our design practice is based on a deep shared love and respect for the understated beauty of Australian landscapes and the precious complexity of our ecosystems. Both avid bushwalkers, we create gardens with a sympathetic eye for our local landscapes and with the health of our environment at the heart of everything we do.
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Partner
Cam brings 25 years of experience in the design, management and implementation of landscape projects at all scales. Following a landscaping apprenticeship and nursery experience building native gardens along the Great Ocean Road, Cam spent the next 20 years focusing his efforts on various forms of environmental restoration with private landholders and government agencies, within both urban and agricultural settings.
Cam has now returned to his landscaping roots in a bid to work closer to home and family, and to exercise his artistic and creative talents, with a desire to bring the beauty of the Australian landscape to the backyards of Canberra. His decades of experience, coupled with a Masters level study of the environment, has resulted in an exceptional understanding of landscape processes. This, in turn, has provided a unique grasp of the finer details of rock placement, water movement, landform, and ecology, which is ever-present in his naturalistic design.
His life outside of work includes a love of family, dogs, gardening and lots of rock climbing.
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Partner
An artist, horticulturalist, and permaculture designer, Cecīlija brings her botanical knowledge and artistic eye to garden design.
Her love of nature began as a country kid gardening with her family in their productive garden in Scone, NSW. After finishing her Bachelor of Visual Arts (Hons Class I) at Sydney College of the Arts, she moved to Tasmania where she practised as an artist and explored Tasmanian forests; this led her to begin formalising her learning about plants and soils.
After five years working as a professional gardener, she made the move to design in order to marry her love of aesthetics and ecology. She designs rich ecosystems that take on a life of their own as they become populated by our native wildlife. Cecīlija wholly believes that gardening and gardens have the profound ability to move, heal, and transform us, connecting people to place and to each other in a way that fosters joy and wonder.
When she’s not in her garden or photographing fungi in the bush, Cecīlija enjoys spending time with her family and hanging out with her dog, as well as working on her many creative projects.
