PROFILE

This growing and successful practice is based in Cumbria, on the edge of the beautiful Lake District National Park. It is headed by Dizzy Shoemark who has a degree in the Natural Sciences and is a Registered Member of the Society of Garden Designers.

Although Dizzy’s scientific background is displayed in her site analyses and attention to detail - client satisfaction and sustainable gardens are her primary concern. Consequently, she employs her own workforce to ensure that her designs are implemented in agreement with both client’s brief and design intent.

A sympathetic approach to each garden she deals with is clearly exhibited in her wide ranging portfolio of imaginative designs, and she was recently selected - in a competition, run jointly by the Society of Garden Designers and the Royal Horticultural Society - to have one of her designs constructed at RHS Wisley. Since the wonderful scenery of Cumbria and the mountains of the Lake District usually dictate the style of most of the gardens she designs, producing a design for a site like RHS Wisley, with none of these constraints, was a refrshing change and allowed her to ‘do her own thing’. Her award winning design can be seen in her portfolio.

Although she gains immense satisfaction from designing gardens which are environmentally friendly or have a wild-life theme, her particular passion is for sophisticated courtyard schemes, especially where water, structural plant material and interesting surface materials - such as pebble mosaics - play a large part.

Her philosophy is that gardens should not only be aesthetically pleasing and easy to care for, but that they also need to suit the lifestyle of the whole family as well as the architecture of the house and its immediate surroundings, and that the garden should offer something of interest - whether it be colour, form, texture or fragrance - throughout the whole of the year.

Although she's based in Cumbria and most of her work is in the Lake District, she has worked for clients in other parts of the country and is prepared to travel further afield if required.