Amanda is on a mission to bring more life and abundance to Aotearoa via our urban gardens. As a student of Permaculture, Landscape Architecture and Regenerative Practice, she blends all three practices together. With her clients at the heart, she is bringing into being a mandala of living, breathing, productive and beautiful gardens.

Amanda’s core focus, when approaching each space, is to listen and observe for what each place wants to become. To draw out the ‘Story of Place’, working in collaboration with her client and the land, to fully immerse into the nature of being in that space. “How can this place serve its surroundings, who lives here and who wants to live here”are some of the questions.

Amanda’s clients’ seek a garden paradise which gifts them with abundant food, medicine and other daily needs. Allowing them in turn to gift their garden back to nature, working in collaboration with the soil, the plants, the birds and the bees in symbiosis.

In order to remind us what our gardens can deliver for us, Amanda started a movement called Gift-The-Garden. Through this, she coaches and mentors other designers in this growing practice of working with nature for the good of all life. She loves working with recycled material to create art.

She also founded the Eastern Bays Sustainable Garden Trail supported by the Orakei Local Board and Auckland East Community Network, which is now spreading across Tamaki Makaurau year by year.

Amanda is Cochair of Permaculture in New Zealand, (PiNZ) and an active regenerative design practitioner. She is immediate past president of the oldest garden club in Auckland, St Heliers Horticultural Society.

She recently completed a Permaculture Diploma examining the value of the confluence of Landscape Architecture, Permaculture and Regenerative Practice, bringing Beauty which awakens love, practicality which keeps us well nurtured and allows us to give back to all life through our garden spaces.

Following three consecutive years of international study tours, and a series of Gift-The-Garden designs, including community gardens, Amanda is now writing a book entitled ‘Garden for wellbeing -for you and the planet’. She regularly presents at various garden clubs and other events around the country.

www.giftthegarden.org.nz