sustainable landscape design
permaculture
native garden design
land rehabilitation
reed beds – photo courtesy mid coast reed beds
What is it?
Organic food production
Grow your own. There are plenty of different ways to do this. Some sources include various gardening shows and magazines, biodynamics, etc. but our favourite is permaculture. This is about creating food producing systems for people based on natural ecosystems. So a permaculture "food forest" is like a rainforest but stacked with food plants.
Native garden design
This is about conserving local ecological processes and biodiversity, with compromises made for the space and light requirements of nearby buildings and open space. We like naturalistic systems with locally sourced seed that approximate local plant communities.
Land rehabilitation
This overlaps with food and native gardens and extends into larger landscapes. It includes planting slopes to reduce erosion, revegetation of forests or other habitats, planting to protect waterways or minimising the effects of building site excavation. Almost every site we inhabit will have some form of damage and some way to repair it. We can help assess how to achieve the best environmental outcome for the least resource expense (time, materials, money).
On site resource management
This means the optimal design of building shape and landscape to efficiently yield solar hot water, solar power, catch and recycle water and cycle nutrient ( by utilising household waste water or compost toilets).
Landscaping for passive solar
You can create a microclimate around the house to moderate climate. In warm temperate and subtropical coastal NSW this means scattered, umbrella like shady trees to cool the summer nor'easter without blocking it or winter sun, low plants from the north east to north west for winter sun access, windbreaks against harsh south and west winds.
low plants to North
taller (fire resistant) wind break to west and southwest
landscaping for passive solar
