Sam Bacales — Horticulturist & Landscape Designer

Sam Bacales · Horticulturist & landscape designerGardens in the places you’d never expect

Sam Bacales is a horticulturist and landscape designer who makes gardens work where they shouldn’t — on roofs, up walls and out on balconies. She works out what will actually thrive, then makes sure it does. Sam has learnt from the best in the business, working alongside Mark Paul — a master of epiphytic and lithophytic plants in Australia, and the founder of The Greenwall Company — for over ten years.

Three places most gardens don’t go

Green roofs, green walls and balconies are all the same problem in different clothing: a small volume of growing medium, a lot of wind, too much sun or not enough, and no forgiveness. Get the plant list right and it looks after itself.

Green roofs

From a garage roof to a whole building. Sam prepares the planting plan — species, quantities, placement, staging — and oversees the installation with the people who build it.

Recent: a coastal green roof at Point Lonsdale, Victoria, planted with mostly Australian coastal species, with some exotics, chosen to survive salt, wind and shallow growing medium.

Green walls & green roofs

Sam designs for the environment the wall or roof will actually live in — the aspect, the exposure, how the space is looked at, and the watering the planting will need as it matures.

She prefers The Greenwall Company’s products, because they last the lifetime of the building.

Recent: planting design for green walls in a Qantas First Class Lounge at Sydney Airport, across roughly forty planting zones.

Balconies & courtyards

The most common request and the most underestimated. A balcony is a green roof with a view and a body corporate. No space is too small to ask about.

Sam works out what will handle the aspect, the wind and the watering you will realistically do — then sources the plants, and the pots if they are needed.

Also available: initial site consultation · concept plans with photo mockups so you can see it before you commit · plant sourcing · project oversight with hard landscape specialists · ongoing maintenance for green walls and green roofs.

Meet Sam Bacales

Sam Bacales — Samantha on the paperwork — is a horticulturist and landscape designer who specialises in the places plants are not supposed to grow — green roofs, green walls and balconies. She has worked in horticulture since 1999 and has run Garden Me Up since 2002, working out which species will survive a particular set of conditions, and then making sure they do.

Her recent work runs from designing the planting for a new indoor green wall in the Qantas First Class Lounge at Sydney Airport, to a coastal green roof at Point Lonsdale on the Victorian coast, to a sun-filled penthouse patio in Willoughby — three completely different palettes, because the point is never a signature look. It is matching the plant to the conditions it has to live in.

Sam works with a small group of people she trusts, and with a network of horticulturist colleagues for bigger jobs — currently including a rainforest restoration project on private farmland inland from Coffs Harbour.

Jamberoo · residential

Privacy, mixed foliage, and a shed nobody wanted to look at

The brief was to make the garden beautiful and private, with a mix of interesting foliage and flowers, and to create a fire pit area. The back garden shed was the focal point, so the planting was designed to disguise the shed and enclose the whole space.

Sam’s part was the design and the planting plans, plus a step-by-step guide and ongoing instruction so the owners could carry it out. They organised the labour and the physical work themselves.

Terrey Hills · residential

Twenty years of ideas, finally in one garden

This one started with ideas Sam had collected over years of working in other people’s gardens. The plan was a complete oasis: bring the outside in, and see green from every viewpoint in the house.

The result is private and enclosed — a place to live in, work in and relax.

Willoughby penthouse · residential

Two bare balconies, two different sets of conditions

The clients moved into a new build with two large empty balconies. They wanted beautiful green spaces, and to take the heat out of the roof cladding. The job involved installing customised Eco Pillows, Eco Gabions and Eco Greenwalls.

Each section has been planted on site using the clients’ existing plants, to reduce the number of small cluttering pots and create more space for moving around the balconies. It has only just been planted, so it will keep filling out over the coming months — still a work in progress.

Green walls & green roofs · commercial and residential

A year of walls and roofs, each with its own brief

In the past year Sam has created planting plans for city rooftops, indoor walls, a lift shaft, a hospital, a coastal hotel roof and Sydney’s first 3D-printed house. Every one came with its own conditions and its own brief, which is why each one looks different.

Planting design by Sam Bacales, prepared either by or with The Greenwall Company.