About Us
Our unique blend of skills across landscape architecture, tourism, recreation, environmental management and community engagement leads to whole systems thinking about the strategy and design for your place
Inspired, insightful, bold but grounded solutions for living in the landscape.
At Inspiring Place, we plan and design for life in the landscape – your life and the natural and cultural systems that support you. Our craft combines art and science, honed over years of practice and sharpened further by our youthful, forward thinking vision.
We don’t just create an end product. We listen to you to understand and respect your insights about the essence of your place. We ground our thinking in the values of your community while understanding the needs of visitors for immersion in authentic and engaging experiences of the landscape. We further inform our work through our discussions with stakeholders, our research and our global adventures in the built and natural environment.
Our unique blend of skills across landscape architecture, tourism, recreation, environmental management and community engagement leads to whole systems reasoning. The result is inspired thinking, responses that are imaginative yet technically well resolved – inspiring places created and well admired. The outcomes are often a quantum leap on what was expected, with uniquely crafted solutions providing the catalyst for desired change.
For over 20 years, clients have entrusted us to work with them in some of the world’s most precious settings, and across a range of natural landscapes and urban settings. We’ve pioneered the profession of place-shaping in Tasmania and look forward to helping you create a new story for your place, one that supports your community and lifestyle, grows your business and attracts visitors to linger and return.
Our Team
John Hepper
/ Founding Director
An effervescent energy, a passion for outdoor adventure, a deep respect for the views of the community and the values they instil in their landscape and exceptional communications skills combine to make John our natural leader. John’s 35+ years of worldwide engagement in tourism, recreation and environmental planning are central to the shaping of the meaningful experiences of the landscape that residents and visitors yearn for.
Jerry de Gryse
/ Founding Director
A pioneer in landscape architecture in Tasmania, Jerry fuses his 40+ years of passion and expertise in planning and design for life outside with a deep understanding of the dynamic interactions between the physical, biological and societal processes that influence the landscape. At the heart of Jerry’s work is a commitment to the shaping of a sustainable future filled with healthy and diverse natural and built landscapes that support resilient communities.
Jordan Davis
/ Principal Landscape Architect
In his life, Jordan has been an explorer of wild places, an active sportsman, a craftsman and an designer of landscapes and small buildings – he is the office Renaissance person. Inspired by the power and beauty of the natural landscape, Jordan seeks to shape meaningful places in the designed landscape that nurture the community while addressing concerns for environmental performance, financial resourcefulness and technical resolution.
Adam Holmstrom
/ Principal Landscape Architect
Adam’s keen passion for the landscape, expressed through his volunteerism in land care, is at the heart of our practice’s concern to maintain healthy ecosystems and to re-nature the city and our suburbs. His focus on listening to and learning from the environment ensures that our projects are true to community and context and alive to the potential for landscapes to inspire deep relationships between people and nature.
Edwina Hughes
/ Principal Landscape Architect
Edwina’s quiet, patient nature belies her background as a tenacious, elite sportswoman. In the office, she is a creative force with an exceptional talent for the design of landscape experiences that are as diverse as the people they serve. Sensitive to context and grounded in a depth of research, Ed’s elegant problem solving offers moments of beauty and delight that fuse art, science and emotion while balancing concerns for sustainability, economy and maintenance.
Spencer Arnold
/ Senior Landscape Technician
Spencer is our quiet achiever. Diligent, skilled and considerate with an abiding respect for the people who will inhabit the landscapes he creates, Spencer is attentive to the need to create healthy, resilient and activated spaces that offer joy to the people who use them.
Andy Armstrong
/ Senior Landscape Technician
Andy is the technical whiz that every office needs bringing two decades of experience as a passionate and enthusiastic design professional to the Inspiring Place team. A Chartered British Architect, Andy is also a certified green building designer, his pragmatism and expertise reflect the sustainability ethos of the studio.
Rosa Virgo + Sayali Rahurkar
/ Graduate Landscape Architects
Rosa and Sayali are the bright young sparks of our studio. With recent Masters’ degrees from Sheffield and Deakin respectively, they bring energy, passion and creativity with new thinking and talents to the team. Together they challenge the deep experiences of the Inspiring Place team with new ways of seeing problems, using new tools and applying contemporary theory to the challenges we address each day as a team.