Nature and Beyond

04/03/2025

Dr Macleod Dunnett will host our Aesthetics and Permaculture workshop on 8 March 2025:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1192122072570757/
🌷🌲🥑🌳🍋️🍊🌺🥬🥕🍐🥒🌿🍇🐝🐞🌸

15/02/2025

20/10/2021

We completed this garden in Irene in Dec 2020.

04/06/2021

It was such a pleasure visiting this garden we completed in December in Irene.
It will remain one of my favourite designs of my career!
The rather understated front door needed something - in what could have been a boring expanse of paving - so a sweep of rocks leads the eye towards it… however it also leads you in another direction too…
The story unfolds exactly as I had hoped! Leading the visitor right to the spiral boma that forms one of the spaces on this amazing property.
I cannot imagine any other garden around this unique home.

05/02/2020

We’ve been rather quiet at Nature and Beyond as we’ve practically become our own client, by working on the construction of Soul Oasis in Mnandi, Centurion - near Copperleaf Golf Estate, on the property on which we are based.

Soul Oasis is a 1Ha property that is becoming an Urban Retreat and events venue/ wellness centre for the mind, body and soul.
If you’d told us 5 years ago we’d be doing something like this, we would’ve laughed out loud. Now, we’re suddenly busy on the project of a lifetime, that could very well set the trend for mindful living and help countless people in the future to make more sense of their lives.

By providing a space where peace and healing on many levels, comes together, Soul Oasis can host mindfulness events, labyrinth ceremonies - like weddings, or conferences for corporates that want to include meditation or mindfulness into such events.
There is a desperate need for places like this, especially in this fast-track impatient world. We constantly think we need to do more and be more, but we never stop doing, so we also end up never just be-ing.
Places like Soul Oasis will help us all slow down and get to the core of our being where that peaceful stillness can always be found. Just breathe! And be in the now.

Since we first began constructing labyrinths in 2008, we’ve constructed them mainly in private gardens. One of them was the first labyrinth to be built at a medical facility in South Africa, at Riverfield Life Hospital.
These projects lead to us understanding that there is a very real need for landscaping on a deeper level... creating garden spaces that literally feed the soul.

We coined the word “Spiritscapes” to explain a form of landscaping designed to invoke a deep sense of peace within the visitor to the extent that the visit to the garden feels as if it was a “spiritual” experience.
We are happy to take on projects in this line, for private gardens, but also for public spaces (community or privately owned) that require a bit more “depth” than simply a “pretty garden”.
Memorial Parks, Healing and Hospital gardens, retreats, churches/places of worship, temples, meditation gardens or even quieter corners of an estate park. By incorporating all the senses as well as creative use of space and an understanding of meditation practices, we are able to transform a space to make it feel like a little piece of “Heaven on Earth”.

04/11/2019

A lovely boma space completed for a client using www.fireblades.co.za.

25/05/2019

The official handover of the first allotment of the herb and vegetable garden at Pretoria Boys High School took place on Friday afternoon. The pupils showed a keen interest in the potential of what we’ve created. The greatest interest was for the chickens though! The second allotment is already being planned... it’s awesome to see what the pupils imaginations come up with. And it’s quite fun being called “sir” by everyone. 😁

17/05/2019

Wildlife biologist Rich Mason never imagined that swimming pools could be so harmful to small wild animals. It wasn’t until friends of his called him to tell him that they were finding frogs dying in their outdoor pool that he gave it some serious thought.“One morning, after a warm rainy night, ...