Garden Design Process and Services

Designing Gardens That Inspire & Enrich Your Life & Wellbeing

Turn your outdoors into a space that inspires, restores, and elevates your lifestyle. Serendipity Garden Designs creates timeless gardens across the Northern Rivers, Tweed Coast & Hinterland, Byron Bay, the Gold Coast and beyond.

Landscape Designer Carmel blends your vision with beautiful, natural materials and native and tropical plants to boost biodiversity, create habitat, and deliver a garden that’s uniquely yours.

DESIGN PROCESS

1. Consultation

During the Garden Design consultation, I will actively engage with you to explore your style preferences, essential design elements, budget, and timeline. This consultation, which lasts between 1 and 1.5 hours, incurs a fee. Following the meeting, you will receive a detailed design fee proposal via email for your review.

2. Concept Design

While collaborating with you, I will develop a Concept Landscape Design Plan. Your input and feedback are crucial in achieving the best possible design for your garden. This plan will include a scaled black and white landscape concept plan, planting schedule, and material choices.

At this stage, you will have the opportunity to make necessary adjustments to ensure the design meets your needs.

3. Documentation

Carmel will review whether your project requires approval during the Concept Design stage. If it does, she’ll inform you at your initial consultation or early in the design process.

4. Construction & Maintenance

Once your garden design is finalised and approvals are in place, Carmel brings your vision to life. Working with skilled Northern Rivers and local landscape contractors, she transforms your ideas from concept to thriving outdoor spaces. Along the way, Carmel coordinates the right professionals to ensure every detail is crafted to the highest standard—so your garden not only looks beautiful but grows and thrives for years to come.

.. WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ..

We recently worked with Carmel from Serendipity Garden Designs in Terranora, and the experience was outstanding. She listened to our ideas and created a beautiful, practical native garden design. Her detailed plant list and care notes have given us the confidence to tackle the project ourselves. Highly recommend Carmel’s expertise and collaborative approach!

Carmel from Serendipity created a beautiful garden design for us that has bloomed over the years into a stunning array of unique plants that have been easy to care for and maintain. Carmel has an excellent horticultural knowledge which is combined with a passion for design and creativity. She was great to work with and we are thoroughly pleased with her garden she created for us.

Carmel did a lovely design for our back yard which included a deck, with a built-in servery, planter boxes and bench seat, and a lawn and garden with native plants. Carmel took a lot of care in selecting materials and plants that suited the space and our requirements, including using vertical space to make the plantings more eye-catching. She made sure the design integrated well with an existing pergola and rainwater tank and a tree that we wanted to keep. We love our Serendipity-designed garden and would highly recommend you talk to Carmel if you need some garden design savvy from someone who really loves what she does.

A massive congratulations on the garden at the Shores Club. Great design and plants. We have had great compliments on it all day. Give yourself a pat on the back and thank you for letting me do little changes and for working with you.

Working with Carmel from Serendipity Garden Designs was a pleasure. Her friendly expertise and professional approach helped us clarify and finalise our native garden ideas with confidence. We couldn’t be happier with the direction she guided us toward.