With a background in communications and most recently project management in the tech industry, how did you transition to the landscape design field? 

From caring for my family’s vegetable and flower gardens to riding nursery carts on weekends and learning about pollination, compost, and work ethic, I have a long personal and professional relationship with landscaping. Combining my background in marketing and entrepreneurship with the Horticulture Tech and Design program at the Horticulture Centre of the Pacific, I started a business in 2005 with a small, mainly female, crew doing landscape maintenance and small installs. Evolving into complete redesigns and renovations, I began designing and contracting and leaned on my colleagues and mentors to create a community that I still rely on today. 

I took a short hiatus from landscapes to recover from a severe skiing accident and shifted my skillset to a less physically demanding career. My time in the tech industry and then at a local brand agency levelled up my project management skills and broadened my design prowess. When it was time to return to landscaping, I had built a solid agile template and had great tools for running a diverse set of construction projects. The diversity and scope of my career history have been integral to how I currently approach builds. I’m also a mother, stepmother, minor hockey manager, and 4H leader which contributes to my passion and objectivity. I’ve learned to be direct, use transparency, humor and most of all, stay curious.

Tell us about the two branches of your company: Inventing Eden Landscapes and Eden Projects. How do they function together?

Inventing Eden is where it all started. It is the holistic branch of my business where clients prioritize permacultural or ecological methods where the focus is on food growth, sustainable living, and encouraging pollinators. This brand also hosts my therapeutic and restorative garden design and installations as well as therapeutic program facilitation. As my skillset and focus evolved it was pretty apparent that there were two distinct streams to my business. 

The work we do under the Eden Projects brand is all about building beautiful outdoor living spaces while cultivating a quality of life. You can bet I’m incorporating horticulture therapy and permacultural principles in Eden Projects’ builds and services.

What is horticulture therapy and how do you incorporate it into your career and service offerings?

Horticultural Therapy (HT) and Therapeutic Horticulture (TH) focus on the purposeful use of plants and plant-related activities to promote health and wellness for an individual or group using plants, horticultural activities, and the natural landscape. I’m working on my registration presently. You see a lot of discussions that support getting out into nature, incorporating it in healthcare, early childhood education, and corporate team building. Horticulture therapy is where it all began for me. Reconnection with nature can have a profound restorative effect on an individual’s mental and physical health. A healing garden, that incorporates different elements and engages any of the five major senses guides the visitor intentionally through their space, creates opportunities for pause and encourages mindfulness.

List 5 of your current favourite combinations.

• Interiors: Gold and natural greys

• Botanical: glaucous blue/greys, copper, lime and magenta blossoms

• Food: braised leafy greens with savoury meats and grains 

• Features: aluminum or steel structures with weighty concrete and local timber seating

• Ambiance: acoustic guitar, soul music, whisky, and a window overlooking a windy night at low tide. 

Describe the top five must-haves for every landscape project.

• A  private space to sit and be mindful. 

• Plants that awaken your senses; be it touch, smell, movement, sound or memory.  

• Containers filled with colour and form, grasses and feathery foliage stirred to life by the breeze.

• Strong and gracefully situated concrete or metal fabrication

• A path or arch or skewed view that beckons you to walk through the gardens to see the other side 

Is there a movement in the landscape industry toward environmentally sustainable design? How does Eden Projects implement these elements? 

As designers and construction specialists, we have an ecological and social responsibility to honour the land and preserve or reintroduce its native soil botany, plant life, and ecosystem. We also have a responsibility to call attention to it, frame it and create an appreciation for working within its confines with as little disruption as possible. Innovative technologies and products help us not only stay relevant but ensure the community as a whole is collaborative in the arts of ecological stewardship. I remain hopeful that we will find less fossil fuel-reliant equipment and production in the years to come.

After reading your glowing testimonials, what would you say are the foundational principles that guide your business?

Uniting contractors, strongbacks, craftsmen and the client to ensure our goals are in alignment and the scope of the project is clear is the key to my success. A genuine desire to treat everyone the way I’d want to be treated. I lead with a curious, humble, and transparent approach to communication, advocating for both the client as well as the contractor. One of my contractors calls me “the quarterback,” but truth be told I’m only standing on the shoulders of giants to bring my clients what we set out to build. 

Name a few key principles that consistently guide your designs.

The key to a thoughtful design is a seamless transition, the composition of man-made features,  and a well-curated tapestry of botany that provides a spectacle each season and invigorates the senses. Creating spaces that harken to the native environment and surroundings of a property; working with the existing topography, and incorporating the tree groves, the waterways, and the landscape of the neighbouring properties and horizons helps to inform good design.  Allowing the house and immediate landscape to stand proud and unique.  A modest, simple and clean design that complements rather than distracts from what’s already around you is sexy! Good design or an opportunity for it pops up anywhere you pause to appreciate it. Complementary flavours, colours, composition, form, movement, space, juxtaposition, perspective, sensory stimulation, sound, light, movement, wildlife, and backdrops… The list goes on!

Can you tell us about some of your current projects?

I’ve got a few exciting projects in the Landsend area right now, It’s a magical place that calls upon the designer to incorporate lifestyle, perspective and the great spectacle of the West Coast backdrop. I’m also very excited about one of our next projects in Metchosin; reclaiming the steep sloping property to incorporate paths that meander through the topography, capturing the panoramic views, encouraging life to return to the bog, firepits and nature play areas, sunken veranda's and spaces to get lost. 

If you could design for a Canadian Celebrity who would you choose and why?

Joni Mitchell, one of the most important and influential female songwriters and recording artists of the late 20th century. Also a loud and proud advocate of the human heart, our precious earth, and the need to appreciate one another, every second and observe things plainly. Joni is also the queen of composition. Each client is our muse for a time and I can’t imagine a better muse at this point in my life. 

If you could get 30 seconds with anyone looking to reinvent their property what would you tell them to consider?

Use your space, extend the way you live inside and outside your home, tell me your dreams for the property no matter how big, no matter what the budget is (let me tell you how we can achieve it no matter the reality), Walk through the doors, drop everything, look out the window, what’s calling out to you? How can I inspire you to get your hands in the garden?