Curriculum vitae · 2026

Auden Garrow

Landscape architect — planting design & public realm

Eleven years spent between the drawing board and the trench, in temperate coastal climates. Seeking a senior planting role in a studio that keeps working after handover.

Discipline
Landscape architecture
Focus
Planting, soils, establishment
Licence
Registered landscape architect
Drawing tools
Vectorworks Landmark, QGIS

Profile

A landscape architect who writes planting plans a grounds team can actually read. Work runs from the first site walk to the five-year establishment review, with the soil survey treated as the real design document.

Comfortable leading a full drawing set and the consultant coordination around it; happier still standing in an open trench with a contractor, agreeing what the detail should have said. Specialises in schemes that must survive a modest maintenance budget, a hard second winter and a change of caretaker.

Selected work

Three projects that describe the range — a civic retrofit, a community-maintained landscape, and a quiet institutional courtyard.

Fernhollow transit plaza2023 – 2025Project landscape architect

De-paving a bus interchange

Led the landscape package for the conversion of a tarmac interchange into a planted plaza, working with the structural and drainage engineers on soil cells beneath the new paving field. Authored the planting schedule, the salt-tolerant street tree palette and the two-year watering regime handed to the city's grounds contractor.

Field note: argued for a mixed tree palette instead of a single avenue species and lost the argument twice before winning it. The mix is the reason the planting read as intact after the second winter.

Marrow Street orchard2021 – 2023Lead designer & planting author

A landscape designed around its volunteers

Designed a community orchard and meadow edge on a disused depot, with the maintenance calendar co-written with the gardening group during four evening workshops. Every species was tested against one question: can somebody with a hand tool and a Saturday morning keep it alive?

Field note: the drawing set includes a one-page pruning sheet pinned inside the tool shed. It has outlasted three committee chairs.

Quillon library courtyard2020 – 2021Planting designer, consultant

Woodland understorey in deep shade

Consulting planting designer to the lead architecture studio on a shaded reading courtyard. Replaced a failing lawn with a layered understorey of ferns, sedges and spring ephemerals, specified the soil amendment, and briefed the in-house grounds team on a four-season regime before handover.

Experience

2022 — present

Senior landscape architect

Harrow & Blake Landscape

  • Runs the planting and soils stream across civic and institutional projects, from concept palette through construction observation.
  • Owns the studio's specification library for planting, topsoil and establishment, keeping it aligned with what local suppliers can actually deliver.
  • Presents to client committees and public meetings, and mentors two junior designers through their first full drawing sets.

2018 — 2022

Landscape architect

Verge Studio

  • Delivered public realm and campus packages through technical design and on site, coordinating grading, drainage and lighting with consultants.
  • Introduced establishment reviews at one, three and five years, which became a standard clause in the studio's appointments.
  • Co-authored maintenance manuals written for grounds staff rather than for the project file.

2015 — 2018

Landscape designer

Thistlebeck Nursery & Design

  • Designed garden and small-site schemes while working alongside the production nursery, learning stock availability as a design constraint.
  • Built the plant trial beds and recorded three seasons of performance notes used in later specifications.

2013 — 2015

Grounds horticulturist

Alderbrook Botanic Trust

  • Maintained the woodland and herbaceous collections, including pruning, soil care and irrigation under a fixed seasonal budget.
  • The habit of reading drawings from the maintenance side of the fence started here and has not stopped.

Capabilities

Planting & ecology

  • Planting plans and schedules
  • Soil assessment and specification
  • Succession and establishment planning
  • Native and climate-adapted palettes
  • Meadow and understorey systems

Technical delivery

  • Drawing sets through construction
  • Grading and drainage coordination
  • Stormwater planting details
  • Specification and schedule writing
  • Site observation and snagging

Working with people

  • Client and committee presentation
  • Contractor and grounds-team briefing
  • Public and resident workshops
  • Mentoring junior designers
  • Maintenance manual authorship

Tools

  • Vectorworks Landmark
  • QGIS
  • Rhino (modelling, light use)
  • Illustrator and InDesign
  • Pencil, trace and section sketches