We walk a piece of ground through four seasons before we draw a line. Where the water goes, where the wind comes from, where the old oak already decided the path — the site tells us. We take notes.
Four walks · one survey · then, and only then, a drawingA plan drawn in an office is a guess with a ruler. A plan drawn in the field is a transcript.
The plan writes itselfPath around the oak, terrace on the view line, nothing built below the flood line, a pond where the spring already is. We only held the pen.
We come in every season with the same boots and the same notebook. Winter shows the bones, spring shows the water, summer shows the shade, autumn shows what the wind does to leaves and where they pile up.
Every reading goes in the ground as a stake with flagging tape. The spring, the oak, the view, the flood line. By the end the site is covered in orange and the plan is visible from the road.
Only now, paper. We draw what the stakes already say and argue about the twenty percent that's left. Most of that argument is about where to put the bench.
The land was here first.
It has opinions.
We write them down.
A landscape practice with a van, three pairs of boots, and a rule: we don't accept a commission we can't walk twelve times. Gardens, estates, a churchyard, two schoolyards, and one very stubborn car park that wanted to be a meadow.