With heightened ecological awareness, our approach helps your garden to provide valuable ecosystem services such as increased biodiversity, drought or heavy rainfall management as well as becoming a functional and beautiful space. We use traditional and contemporary garden landscaping techniques.
Mambo Gardens, Margate is operated by Simon Phillips. Simon has worked for over twenty years in gardens across London, Surrey and Kent. He has an MSc in Ethnobotany from the School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent. His research focus was the Life histories of allotment gardeners in Dane Valley, Margate. Simon has been on several botanical research expeditions in South America, Oman and India. This experience and knowledge is woven into elements of our gardens.
While we are well established in traditional garden design and landscaping, we are most excited by the opportunities that every garden offers to contribute more deeply to improving our urban environment in times of global upheaval of weather patterns, species extinction and human stress.
Residential gardens harbour the most biodiversity of all land use types in the United Kingdom. Perfect spaces to become little nature preserves as well as retaining a contemporary style and functionality.
We are inspired by ethnobotany - the study of how people of a particular culture make use of native plants. We therefore look to plants not just for their ornamental value but utility, with more ecological depth. We are inspired by the concept of reconciliation ecology, which looks to encourage biodiversity in the human-dominated ecosystems of the Anthropocene era. Rather than excessive hard landscaping, we can apply alternative permeable landscaping to mitigate against storm runoff which overflows sewage systems into our coastal waters where we swim.
In a nutshell, the gardens we make become dynamic spaces which you can enjoy on multiple levels as well as supporting other species and other people in your neighbourhood as a by-product of the design. If you want to learn more about how we apply these ideas, please see our Services page.
We offer an initial free consultation to discuss your preferences, then work on a plan for the garden layout and landscaping costs. This can be done in phases or in one go. A garden is a growing and evolving space. We are only too pleased to return to existing projects to help with a garden’s evolution.
