Provocative gardens that push our expectations of landscape

Provocative gardens that push our expectations of landscape

growing things, building things
and relishing the chaos

Knowing the context, feeling what’s right, respecting the process

Award-winning landscape design inspired by the way you live

A landscape artist

A landscape artist

Designing places for all five senses

Designing places for all five senses

Plant obsessed

Plant obsessed

Designing Experience

K. Dakin Design is a landscape architecture and horticulture consultancy that taps into ancient and new ideas to create gardens that bring us back to life. We are nature and nature is us. Human survival depends on listening, learning and connecting with land on its own terms. My gardens engage all five senses, inviting us to experience outdoor space with our whole minds and bodies. I want to wake people up to the fact that we are all part of nature in her chaos, entropy and life-giving power.

Awards

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What story is your garden waiting to tell?

My Philosophy of Landscape Architecture

The land tells our story. What happens on the surface of the earth becomes part of the fossil record. I approach landscape architecture as storytelling. I help my clients tell their stories through design: a rooftop meadow can support your daily practice of watching morning pollinators; a stone labyrinth brings you out onto your land to experience life’s mysteries; the master plan for your estate can cultivate your intentions for lifestyle and legacy.

More About My Practice

Projects

I work with land and home owners, architects and developers. I offer horticultural consulting, master planning and design services for projects ranging from green roofs to food gardens, rain gardens, pollinator gardens, wild gardens and rewilding. I work on estates, residential gardens, commercial & multifamily projects.

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Estates

Home Gardens

Public Spaces

Green Roofs

“I’m watching nature and all of her entropic, chaotic glory, and trying to keep up. Nature brings us profound changes that we are always a part of, and always have been a part of.”

— Karla Dakin

Cultivating Happiness

Stewarding land & relationsihps

I want my clients to feel joy and happiness when they are in their gardens. I want them to experience something new: to look at their house from a different angle; to inspire long-term stewardship of the lands they walk.

I grow long-term relationships with my clients, whether they are architects with whom I regularly collaborate, or individuals and families who engage me to create the outdoor experience of their homes. I am frequently called onto projects and into institutions for my horticultural knowledge, spanning food gardens, green roofs and rewilded landscapes.

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