Considered Pruning.
Coastal Northland.
Professional care and enhancement of landscape trees, hedges, and topiary.
Specialist pruning, clipping and shaping through coastal Northland.
A horticulturally focused approach coupled with a design-derived vision.
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Entrance Globes
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Runway Olives
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Layered views
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Dry Garden Forms
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Borrowed Scenery
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Clipped Clouds
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XLarge Globes
How I Work
Most gardens I take on need two things.
First, a structural reset to bring form and vitality back to mature specimens. Then once the structure is set, Annual Care is the ongoing seasonal approach that enhances the gardens form year on year.
The Reset
A defined first-year restoration. Typically two to six days of structural work spread across the right seasonal windows, with a written scope and a fixed project fee. This structural reset returns the garden to where the form can hold itself — wonky or patchy hedges and woody or leggy shrubs are brought back, the congested specimen trees are thinned, opened and reduced where necessary and the whole garden is refined.
Quoted from a site visit.
Most Resets fall between $2,000 and $8,000 depending on scope.
Annual Care
An ongoing relationship with a small roster of gardens I hold to a seasonal calendar. Four to twelve visits a year, seasonally timed to the pruning windows of the plants on site, with a fixed annual fee invoiced monthly. One steady set of eyes and hands in your garden every season, year round. Most clients move here after the Reset.
From $4,500 per year.
Specialist Pruning
One-off project commissions outside the Reset or Annual Care. Creating a sculptural specimen tree from mature stock. Reducing and restoring hedging. Bringing vitality back to a neglected orchard and improving yield. Formative pruning of recently installed landscapes to set the structure and fulfil the design intent as the garden grows in. Comprehensive tidy and presentation of pre-listing homes. Priced as a defined scope after a site visit.
Quoted from a site visit.
Garden Consultation
A 90-minute site visit with a detailed de-brief and written year-ahead plan; where the garden is at, what the garden needs, in what season, in what order, and what it’ll cost.
If you're not sure where to start, or you want a professional set of eyes before committing to any of the above.
$395 flat fee within 45 minutes of Parua Bay
Credited against any Annual Care plan started within 30 days
Who I Work With
Most of my clients are long-term owners of mature gardens who want the landscape preserved rather than redesigned. Some are new owners that have inherited a garden in need of restructuring or continued professional care. Others are based internationally and need a consistent pair of eyes they trust.
A handful are lodges, AirBnB’s and private orchards. Occasionally it's a landscape designer who needs a specialist for the formative stages of a local design project.
Most relationships start with a Reset and move into Annual Care after the first year. Some properties only need the one-time restoration, and a small number of clients work with me on individual specialist projects only — we figure out which path suits you at the site visit.
About
Combining passion for architecture, sculpture & design with an extensive horticultural knowledge, my work shapes the relationship between people and place.
I'm Mitch. I live in the beautiful Parua Bay with my partner and young family and I run The Botanical Barber from here.
With over 15 years of professional horticultural experience, a comprehensive knowledge of architecture & the built environment and a lifetime spent exploring the cross-roads of design and nature, I have developed a unique approach to my gardening.
Design and attention to detail are at the heart of everything I do, while creative pruning and clipping are the cornerstone techniques that allow me to define structures, balance volumes and dance between the details that matter up close and the form that matters from a distance.
“I don't divide architecture, landscape and gardening; to me they are one.”
— Luis Barragan
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