“Garden Design is so fascinating and challenging. Unlike Interior Design, where everything stays the way you put it, gardens are constantly changing and evolving – you need to be able to envisage what a garden WILL look like in 10 years time to be able to create the ideal garden design today.”
- Cathie Smithers, Principal, Gifted Gardens

Cathie started Gifted Gardens in 2010 to share the learnings from her own experiences designing and creating gardens for 10 years - a passion which led her to leave her Product Management career. While she holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree, Cathie is as a self-taught garden designer, and as such can offer her services at a more affordable rate than those with formal landscaping qualifications. Her natural talent shines through in the gardens she has created in California (where she lived for 6 years), Sydney and the NSW South Coast.

Cathie is constantly researching online & printed media, as well as regularly visiting specialist nurseries, to increase her plant knowledge and discover new garden design concepts & trends. She loves the challenge of designing with growing things & experiments a great deal with her own garden.

Cathie believes there are people at the same stage she was at several years ago: looking to create a garden themselves and in need of some help with design and planning - but not wanting to hire expensive garden landscapers who only provide detailed garden advice and plans if they will also be completing all the work. And she’s learned that for people who prefer not to undertake a big garden project themselves, having a structured plan for their garden is ideal for showing to different landscape contractors in order to get “apples-to-apples” comparative quotations.

Cathie created Gifted Gardens because she is passionate about using her knowledge and personal experience (gained hands-on in a variety of garden settings) to help people make more of their gardens!