Landscape design in Hobart

Every design starts with a free estimate based on your request and photos. After a site visit we can discuss a fixed price quote, so you know exactly where you stand before work begins.

The site decides the design

I start with what is already there. Which way the block faces, where the sun lands in winter, how water moves across it in a downpour, what the soil is actually like under the grass, and how steep it gets. A design that works with all of that costs less to build and needs less work to keep.

Hobart yards throw up the same handful of problems over and over. A slope nobody can use. A wet corner that never dries out. A western wall that cooks everything planted against it. Clay that sets like concrete in February. A southern side of the house that gets no winter sun at all. None of those get solved by choosing nicer plants.

Drainage and levels first

Water and levels are the two things worth spending money on early, because everything else sits on top of them. Getting the falls right, putting drainage where the water actually goes, and setting levels so the flat parts of the yard are flat where you need them. All of that is invisible in a photo, and it is the difference between a garden that holds up and one that does not.

Plants that will actually live

I grew up in my family’s native plant nursery on the Tasman Peninsula, so plant selection is not guesswork. Plants get chosen for the aspect, the soil, the exposure and how much time you want to spend on them, not off a catalogue page. Natives, exotics, edibles or a mix, depending on how you want to use the place.

Coastal blocks get salt-tolerant planting. Windy sites get a shelter plan before anything ornamental goes in. Low maintenance means low-maintenance species, not the same garden with mulch over it.

Built around a budget, and staged

I would rather design something you can afford to build than something that looks good on paper. Tell me the number you have in mind at the start. It changes the materials, the scale and the order of work, and it is much easier to plan around than to discover halfway through.

The same hands from plan to planting

The plan and the build are the same person. Nothing gets specified that I cannot build, no detail gets lost handing over to a contractor, and when something on site turns out different from the plan, the call gets made by someone who knows why the plan said what it said.