Our Process

The goal is to move into a time when our advancement does not counter the beauty or the stability of the natural world. Aldo Leopold once wrote:

“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

We believe in this core principle; that all landscapes wherever they are, support and preserve the natural functions and the myriad benefits which come from them.

How We Work

We work with our clients, collaborators, creatives and scientific experts to ensure that design and ecosystems thinking are drawn on harmoniously. There is no by the book way of design; we allow the information we analyse to bring about the answers for each individual project.

  • The Ecology of the landscape informs and directs everything else here at Digg & Co, it comes first and last.

    We offer a wide variety of ecological surveys and plans including biodiversity baselining, Bat surveying and licencing, LEMP, CEMP and much more.

    At Digg & Co. we do not consider the ecology of landscapes and buildings a box to tick, but rather as something to guide us, something in the landscape to celebrate and strengthen. We believe that biodiversity after intervention should be better than the biodiversity baseline. This has driven us to lean into new and more sustainable approaches to ecology. Consequently, we have found ourselves at the forefront of the Biodiversity Net Gain movement.

  • The way we design is unique to each project. However, the process can be broken down into key stages.

    Initially, we spend time with our clients and the landscape, taking cues from the land itself, we establish the general direction for the project.

    This is followed by a research and analysis phase, collecting information from many different sources. The topography, underlying ecology of the landscape, its history, hydrology, and much more are all considered. These various histories of the land, in all their forms, are explored to see how they can inform the landscape’s future. Merging our findings with the key design drivers, we construct a conceptual vision of the landscape and how it will be looked after. This provides a clear direction for the design.

    Once everyone in the project team is content with the new direction, the designing begins. As we visualise and detail the project to understand and add context and rationalisation to how the project with be delivered, a design begins to emerge from the concept. Our designs are often fixed to a wider world view of connectivity, which reaches far beyond the project. This approach allows us to create a distinctive and refined design that is grounded in both the natural and spatial elements of the landscape, unique to its cultural roots, and historic ecotype.

Why This Way?

We believe that by weaving together ecology and design, landscapes can be created that benefit not only the people for whom they are intended, but the entire system within which they work.

  • We know that our lives are tied to the health of the natural systems which surround us. It has always been this way, and it will remain this way forever. But, as society moves faster, and improve our methods of extracting, abstracting, replacing and growing, we threaten the threshold at which our life support system can rely.

    When we first began re-imagining our surroundings as ambitious hunter gatherers, the world’s natural riches were laid out in front of us, ever present, ever replenishing, ebbing and flowing like the tide. Who could have imagined that one day they would come under such collective human pressure?

    Today, that pressure is so real that the very systems we rely on might become less advantageous for us…

    So, before they do, our mission at Digg and Co. is to be part of a group of designers, thinkers and doers, who can re-imagine a world where the riches of nature are bright, vivid and tangible on every street, in every neighborhood, across our wildest landscapes and into the dense urban realm, and where the processes of architecture and design benefit not only the people for whom they are intended, but the entire system within which they work.

Highlights of the Services we Provide: 

Landscape Architecture services          

  • Vision Creation

  • Ecological & Landscape Masterplanning

  • Concept Designs

  • Detailed Designs

  • Landscape Planning Services

  • Technical Designs

  • On-site consultation during delivery

  • Post-completion management and maintenance guidance 

 We do not offer Landscape Visual Impact Assessment, but we would happily recommend you to some of our trusted partners.

Expertise: We pride ourselves on ecologically rich plantings and habitat restoration plans across all scales. We would love to work with you to realise how beneficial the soft landscape can be to projects. We work with our ecologists to blend aesthetic designs with ecological theory and applied science and tie our designs to the surrounding ecosystem.

Ecological Services

  • Ecological baseline assessments

  • Ecological land management plans

  • BNG design

  • BNG calculations

  • HMMP (habitat management and monitoring plans)

  • Habitat mapping

  • Habitat condition assessment

  • Botanical surveys

  • Woodland condition assessment

  • Protected species surveys

  • CEMP

  • LEMP

 

We offer a full suite of ecological services to support ecologically focused projects through planning. Experienced with planning consultancy, including Phase 1 surveys, protected species surveys and assessments, impact assessments, BNG assessments and management plans to support projects in this context.

Our Mantra

To design within the boundaries of our living ecosystems.

  • We design beautiful spaces, but not just for an aesthetic; they have to function, as if untampered with, thereby allowing fundamental environmental benefits. As a consequence these spaces support many of our daily needs (clean air, clean water, healthy communities, access to wildlife and space).

    The result is an artistic merging of both the fabricated and the wild. By looking at the world in this way, it gives us the chance to pursue our human story alongside the continuing story of all other life.