Behind every garden in the Auckland Garden Showcase is a talented landscape designer with their own creative vision, style and approach to outdoor living. From award-winning professionals to innovative design studios, each has created a unique space that showcases fresh ideas, thoughtful design and the latest in landscaping trends.
Discover the designers behind each garden, learn about their inspiration and explore how their ideas can help shape your own outdoor project.
Parrot Landscaping
North Shore-based Parrot Landscaping is the team bringing the entire Garden Showcase to life this year. Founded by David and Valeria with over 20 years of combined experience, the crew is known for turning ordinary backyards into thoughtfully planned, built-to-last outdoor spaces.
From paving and retaining walls to planting and water features, no project is too big or too complex for them – which is exactly why they’re the ones building this year’s showcase from the ground up.
Designgroup Stapleton Elliott
An award-winning landscape architect with 17 years’ experience, Mel has led the design and delivery of projects across residential, commercial, rural, childcare, aged-care and green technology sectors. That range shows in her approach — equally comfortable with intimate residential spaces and the bigger-picture thinking that comes with large-scale commercial work.
Her Garden Showcase zone brings that same considered, structure-led approach to a central courtyard — a calm, ordered space built to anchor the areas around it.
Bartleet Landscape Studio
Trish and her son Sebastian have merged practices to create Bartleet Landscape Studio in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland, pairing Trish’s extensive experience with Sebastian’s fresh insights for a distinctive, two-generation approach to garden design. Trish has been described as the most original and confident garden designer in Auckland, known for stretching the boundaries of perception and extending her clients’ experience of space, while Sebastian brings a Landscape Architecture degree and a strong focus on creating gardens that respond to their environment through texture, colour and balance.
Val Puxty Landscape Design
Designing contemporary residential gardens since 2007, Val believes you don’t need a huge space to create somewhere beautiful. Her Garden Show zone is a courtyard garden – calm, luxurious, and proof that a small footprint can still deliver a big “wow.”
Featuring a fireplace, wood stacker, layered paving and decking, and considered plant combinations, it’s a masterclass in getting the details right.
Get Outside Ltd
Nearly 50 years in the industry and running her own practice since 2004, Jill specialises in natural play spaces that inspire care, wonder, and exploration in children of all abilities. Her Garden Show zone, “Whiria” (to weave), brings different cultures and stories together into one space of belonging for everyone – including the tamariki.
Expect curiosity, excitement, and harmony, with permeable pavers and porous walls that let the landscape breathe.
Nick Robinson — Landscape Architecture, Ecology & Garden Design
With 30 years in the industry, Nick designs naturalistic, plant-focused gardens that follow nature’s own cues – lush, ecological, and full of theatre. His Garden Show zone draws on the spiral, the universal symbol of unfolding potential, inviting visitors to slow down and look closely.
Expect enchantment and discovery, built from natural stone, timber, water, and plants – a space designed to spark conversations about plants and the simple pleasures of nature.
Landscape Designer
Tori Arundel brings a hands-on, detail-focused approach to garden design, with a knack for making the most of smaller, tighter spaces. Her work favours considered planting and thoughtful layout over scale — proof that a compact footprint can still pack in plenty of interest.
This year’s Small Landscape Garden is a great showcase of that philosophy in action.
