Soulscape

Featuring gardens of the Great Ocean Road

This book is about landscape values. It is the story of Peter and Simone Shaw and the gardens they create in their business, Ocean Road Landscaping, their home garden, Sunnymeade and how you can take inspiration to work with the landscape in creating your garden.

Soulscape: Connecting Gardens to Landscape takes readers on a photographic journey through ten gardens located along the world-famous Great Ocean Road. It illustrates the challenges and outcomes of creating a garden by the sea or in the wilderness, and how each garden fits within its natural environment, accompanied by a detailed glossary of plant species.

Peter Shaw shares 'how to' information, coming from his own experience of over 20 years in designing, building and maintaining coastal gardens, and his commitment to incorporating native and indigenous plants to enhance the wider landscape that they inhabit.

Collectively, the gardens in this book serve as a primer for homeowners, gardening enthusiasts, or anyone with a deep love for nature.

About the Author

Peter Shaw is the principal of Ocean Road Landscaping, an award-winning landscape architecture firm based in Anglesea, which he founded in 1995 with his wife, Simone Shaw. Their practice has a considered approach to constructing gardens that complement their local environment along the Great Ocean Road, Geelong and the Surf Coast of Victoria.

Shaw's business, which started as a one-man operation 25 years ago, has now turned into a team of over 20 like-minded designers, landscape builders, plant specialists and maintenance gardeners. From creating his own garden, Sunnymeade, he developed a deep love of gardening by the sea. Working with the local environment, learning through trial and error, and overcoming challenges not faced by urban counterparts, allowed him to build a set of experiences and skills that are unique to the gardening world.

Shaw shares his unique knowledge of coastal gardening through running workshops on developing gardens, holding a gardening show called 'Dig It' on Geelong's community radio, and giving public lectures on landscaping in bushfire areas, landscape design and garden building. He lives in Anglesea with Simone and their four children, Jarred, Matthew, Gabrielle and Rosie.