01
Public gardens
Civic planting with a long maintenance plan, not a first-year show of colour.
Landscape architecture since 1998
Ground that holds a city together.
Field & Harbour designs public gardens, shoreline parks, and civic planting for towns that intend to last.
The studio
We draw the ground first, then the buildings find their place.
Most of our work sits between a harbour wall and a bus stop: places people cut through without noticing, until the planting, the grade, and the shade start doing their job. We take those ordinary edges seriously.
The studio is twelve people — landscape architects, a horticulturist, and two people who spend half the year on site with contractors. We work in Port Meridian and, when asked, along the same coast in both directions.
A park that cannot be maintained is a drawing, not a landscape. Mara Ellison, principal
Practice
What we take on
02
Shoreline restoration
Salt marsh, boardwalk, and the messy line where a town meets the tide.
03
Squares and yards
Paving, trees, and seating that survive markets, protests, and school runs.
04
Planting design
Canopy, understory, and the unfashionable shrubs that actually hold a slope.
05
Estate landscapes
Private ground treated with the same patience we give a municipal park.
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Seasonal stewardship
Year-round care contracts so a finished project does not quietly fail.
Selected work
Two recent grounds
2024 — Port Meridian
East Quay salt marsh
A four-hectare edge between the container yard and the old town. We lowered the seawall in three places, let the marsh back in, and ran a timber walk that floods on the spring tide — on purpose.
2023 — St. Brigid
North Court walled garden
A municipal greenhouse yard turned back into a garden that feeds the library café. Brick repaired, not replaced. Fruit on the south wall; shade trees on the north for the after-school programmes.
If you have a piece of ground that is not working, write to us.
We take on a handful of commissions each year. Tell us the site, the constraint, and the season you need to open.
Write to the studio