Sustainable garden design

Garden designer, Peter Adley from Yardstick Landscape Design in Prospect, South Australia, provides expert advice on sustainable garden design and permaculture.

Which areas of garden design do you specialise in?

I can - and have - designed in a very wide variety of styles, but there are two areas that I have a particular passion for: contemporary design and environmentally sustainable design systems. The latter has been a real focus of mine of late.

What are some of your favourite plants you use in your garden designs?

There are so many. Some all-time favourites include Cotyledon 'Silver Waves', which is a super-tough succulent that is white-silver with a crinkly top, reminiscent of coral; Dodonaea viscose 'Purpuraea', the Purple Sticky Hopbush, which is a fast-growing native and excellent for screening; and Rosmarinus officinalis, which is rosemary. It is such a good plant. It's tough; it's got a beautiful scent; it clips if desired; and you can cook with it. What more could you ask for?

Does a garden designer need to have an understanding of, or an appreciation for, art?

Need to? Probably not. I do think it a great advantage, though. I believe garden design to be a form of artistic endeavour - and as with all pursuits, the better your understanding of all things pertaining to that subject the better placed you are to practise it.

How can permaculture be incorporated into garden design?

Permaculture is too big a subject to cover properly here, but suffice to say it is (in part) a system of design. To quote Bill Mollison, co-founder of the permaculture idea, "each component in a system performs multiple functions, and each function is supported by multiple elements". More than incorporating permaculture into a design, permaculture is the design methodology.

How common is it for garden designers to work with architects in a 'holistic' design sense?

Surprisingly, it's not all that common. I have recently begun another business called the Sustainable Design Studio with two colleagues - a landscape designer and lecturer and an architect specialising in straw-bale buildings - to design systems that work for entire sites. Considering how important gardens and houses are to each other, it amazes me that they are almost always designed separately.

You started your professional life as a chef. Why did you decide to change career paths and get into landscape design?

As much as I loved being a chef, it wasn't a great career for the future, with the long hours, split shifts, weekend work and so on. I also wanted to create something that lasted. The choice of landscape design was after a lot of soul searching and consideration. I have always had a connection with plants and the earth.

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