Public Landscapes – Seed Landscape Design

We specialise in creating life-enhancing, beautiful public spaces, private gardens and commercial landscapes of all sizes, designed to benefit people, plants, and the planet.

Old Lodge & Parkland Routes

Dyrham Park, Nr Bath

Dyrham Park is an ancient landscape that has been occupied by humans since the Bronze Age. Owned by the National Trust, it’s a Grade II* Registered Landscape containing a Grade I mansion house and the Grade II buildings of Old Lodge. This sensitive, palimpsest landscape presented a complex challenge: to make the site more accessible for visitors while protecting important historical and ecological aspects and retaining a sense of discovery and magic.

As part of an ongoing infrastructure project, we created a series of landscape interventions at Old Lodge as well as establishing new parkland routes. Collaborating with landscape heritage specialist Sian Jones, we developed a set of guiding heritage landscape principles. A study of how today’s visitors used the landscape kept our design process relevant for the next chapter.
Abbey Yard

Glastonbury Abbey, England

At Glastonbury Abbey, we created a new focus for the site entrance, taking inspiration from what had been hidden over the years as well as the surrounding Somerset landscape. As a Scheduled Ancient Monument with Grade I and II listed buildings, this is the most sensitive project we have worked on. Any excavations below 300mm deep required an archaeologist to supervise, so we had to reduce excavations as much as possible.

We wanted to celebrate St. Patrick’s Chapel to make it the entrance focal point, highlighting the old north wall. We also sought to make a tranquil garden around the chapel, with a domestic scale reflecting the character of the historic alms house that used to be on the site. This garden was defined along the line of the lost 14th–15th century wall.
Dining Courtyard

Ralph Allen School, Bath

Ralph Allen School is a coeducational comprehensive secondary school, located in the village of Combe Down which lies within the Bristol and Bath Greenbelt, a World Heritage Site and the Cotswold Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Our brief was to create a simple to maintain, robust and nurturing landscape for the students to easily navigate—shaped by desire lines that reflected how the space was instinctively used.

Collaborating with architects Feilden Fowles on the masterplan for the whole school, we aimed to unify and add to the existing landscape work. As part of this, the Dining Courtyard is a new outside space for the students to use for relaxing, meeting or picnicking, inspired by nature and the surrounding woodland and meadows.
Owlstone Croft

Queens' College, Cambridge

Owlstone Croft is owned by Queens’ College Cambridge and provides shared student accommodation. Situated on a sensitive two-and-a-half-acre site, it’s next to Paradise Nature Reserve and the ancient water meadows on the banks of the River Cam. Working with architects Mikhail Riches as part of a Net Zero Carbon masterplan to introduce 60 generous study bedrooms in 13 new postgraduate homes, we took inspiration from the adjacent wetland landscapes and integrated a complex SuDS and biodiversity net gain strategy.

The landscape needs to support this sociable and close-knit student community without diminishing the ecological and historic sense of place. The buildings are integrated into a water-inspired landscape of swales and damp meadows, with the south facing ‘secret gardens’ providing gathering spaces where students can meet and dine outside.
Dine In Southall (DISH)

London Borough of Ealing, England

DISH is a cooking academy in Southall, Ealing, an area characterised by its diverse community, including many Punjabi and Somalian families. The academy aims to foster community learning and betterment through collective growing, cooking and eating. At the centre of the project, Southall Manor House is a Grade II* Listed Tudor building, potentially one of the oldest surviving buildings in West London, which dates from 1578. We collaborated with Architecture00 to bring the community focused uses of cooking and ‘grandmother learning’ into the landscape around the house.

Our design celebrates the heritage of the building and garden, bringing a naturalistic approach that unifies and enhances a collection of previously disparate areas. We worked closely with Cultivate London on the management of the garden and the running of community workshops.
Waynflete Quad

Magdalen College, Oxford

The Waynflete site of Magdalen College is located on the southern bank of the river Cherwell in Oxford, opposite the main College and separated by historic water meadows. Working in collaboration with architects Stanton Williams – who are developing the student accommodation – our focus is on bringing the beauty and ecology of the surrounding context into the site.

We’re connecting and enhancing the river area, while mapping out the entire landscape for accessibility, carefully integrating accessible sloped routes rather than steps. The juxtaposition of a wild water habitat and the built environment makes this project very special.
Manor Works

Sheffield, England

Manor Works was our first completed community project and our second Sheffield collaboration with Architecture00. With a focus on local entrepreneurs and creatives, the building provides a range of facilities for the Manor Estate in Sheffield—including rentable office space, artist’s studios, workshops and a community centre on the ground floor.

Our design wraps around the new building, providing an interactive and rugged landscape. The building is clad in aluminium mesh for which we designed a matrix of climbing plants. This sustainable and evolving green facade softens the robust surface and gives the building a dynamic seasonality.
Arcus Road

Lewisham, London

This PassivHaus social housing scheme is in the borough of Lewisham in south-east London. The southern boundary of the sloping site is shared with Bromley Hill Cemetery and surrounded by housing to the west, north and east. The scheme was created as an Exemplar for Phoenix Housing Association during the pandemic. It prioritises pedestrian movements and making safe low-traffic streets as being fundamental to creating communities and improving social connectedness.

Our landscape design is inspired by the idea of front gardens being social spaces to meet with your neighbours. Robust, drought tolerant planting ensures simple maintenance.