About me

I plan a garden for the long term, not just for quarters.…

As a business administrator and IT salesperson, I learned a lot:

to look at the detail, to be persistent, to analyse, to make decisions. These qualities help me today to provide

well thought-out solutions for my clients' gardens. 

Moving from the two dimensions of a laptop screen 

to working in a three-dimensional world.

In my years of studying garden design in London and in my training in Tokyo, Kyoto and San Francisco, I learned to get a feel for a garden and its plants rather than just relying on information I’d read.

I found it incredibly enriching to experience a garden not only with my head but with my whole body. I started to observe the different elements using all my senses such as touching the soil and smelling the leaves. I soon developed an intuition for plants and knowing where they would thrive.

You learn design by immersing yourself in good design...

When I went to Japan, Japanese gardens hardly interested me.

However, I wanted to be able to grasp the design, the balance between emptiness and fullness and to be able to use these design principles in 'my' gardens.  

After a year's internship in a rural gardening and landscaping company near Tokyo and countless trips to gardens and museums with my host family, I too was completely enthralled by Japanese gardens.

So much so that in 2012 I co-founded the Real Japanese Gardens platform with Tokyo garden designer Keizo Hayano. I visited, photographed and wrote about over 60 Japanese gardens and temples. What a dream job!

Inviting life - and discovering a new world

I am convinced: we are more than just ourselves. Our home can be shared with many other creatures. It can be a place that birds, butterflies, lizards, bees and beetles love to visit.

And so, in turn, the garden begins to enrich our lives. 

English Gardening School in London, UK

2008-9 Laying the foundations: Garden design course in Chelsea Physic Garden in London

Gartenflora, Berlin

2008-9 Intern for the gardening magazine “Gartenflora”. Lots of reading, researching and writing.