ABOUT

My practice is built around a responsive approach to design — one that respects the people and places already there, builds in flexibility from the outset, and allows a landscape to adapt as needs, climates and communities shift over time. This thinking is grounded in 30 years work across healthcare, housing and education, and in research into environmental design, agroecology and community-led practice.

My journey began with a Geography degree at the University of Cambridge, followed by work as a Parliamentary Researcher with the then shadow environment team. I subsequently completed a PhD entitled Just Design under the guidance of Professor Linda McDowell, exploring the practical philosophies of environmental design through a US–UK comparison of community design and affordable housing. The research was based at the University of Cambridge and included time as a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley's College of Environmental Design.

During my doctoral studies I began developing a studio practice. Joining Issam Kourbaj and Candelaria Capurro Ferrer's pioneering artistic space, Group C, opened up a new way of thinking with the material and imaginative qualities of place. My decision to move into landscape architecture was shaped by a number of formative encounters and friendships — with community architect Kay Jordan; Robert Loder, co-founder of the Triangle Arts Trust; ground-making artist Nina Edge; and systems thinker Annetta Pedretti, whose work continues through the visionary House of Annetta in East London.

A part-time Diploma in Landscape Architecture at the University of the West of England enabled me to combine study with professional practice. During this period I worked on innovative public-space initiatives in Liverpool and London, including projects with the Centre for Accessible Environments, the National Trust and the Liverpool Architecture and Design Trust. Horticultural training at Chelsea Physic Garden deepened my understanding of the foundational roles of soil, water and biodiversity in sustaining human and ecological health.

Over the past three decades I have worked across healthcare, heritage, public realm, farming and community contexts — including the landscape for Maggie's Oxford with Wilkinson Eyre Architects and Churchill Hospital; co-developing the brief for the Living Room at Guy's Cancer Care Centre in London with Future City; Greening the Romford Ring Road with What If: Projects and Havering London Borough Council; and work with Earth Trust and Playlink, exploring short-term interventions alongside long-term stewardship of landscape and heritage.

From 2015–2020 I was a Research Associate at Coventry University's Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, and in 2023 and 2024 I was honoured to be a Researcher in Residence at Stellenbosch University. Teaching and skills-sharing have included undergraduate teaching at Anglia Ruskin University, contributing to postgraduate programmes at Central Saint Martins, and co-hosting graduate learning spaces with the Centre for Sustainable Transitions at Stellenbosch.

In 2018 I became an active member of my family's farming collective, a role that continues to inform my practice and deepen my understanding of the relationships between land, food, ecology and culture. Related work has included contributing to the Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival, co-developing the concept of Food Webs as a cornerstone of local economic strategy, and serving on the farm management board of the Suffolk Flora Preservation Trust.

Listening remains central to my approach. It has been shaped by early research into community design and affordable housing, and deepened through projects such as co-authoring UK Government guidance on Inclusive School Design, facilitating an international design competition for Liverpool Housing Action Trust, and developing collaborative research methodologies within agroecology and systems change. Training in organisational constellations with The Whole Partnership further strengthened my appreciation of how places and organisations function as interconnected living systems.

Today my work sits at the intersection of design, stewardship and strategy. I work with landscapes as living relationships — supporting responses to changing environmental conditions, biodiversity recovery, food security, governance and long-term care. Across every scale of project, my commitment remains the same: to create with the life of place, cultivating the conditions for health, coherence and flourishing for all who dwell there.