Marina and Craig at Semper design gardens that work with nature and believe lighting can play its part. Here’s how.

‘Garden spaces are important to us because they remind us that we’re part of something bigger, and that we share this world with other living beings.’

Here, Craig Atkinson gets to the heart of Semper, the garden design business he and Marina Ralph lead. Watch the video above for more or read on for our highlights.

‘Semper comes from the Latin word for always, forever,’ adds Craig, ‘and we like the idea that our gardens are always changing, forever shifting and moving and growing. All our gardens are kind of an experiment in time.’

Welcoming nature

To successfully achieve their aims, the team make sure they take all factors into consideration at the outset. This begins, of course, with the customer.

‘When designing garden spaces, we first of all listen to how the humans need to use the space,’ says Marina. ‘But ultimately, we want to create a garden that enhances nature and supports wildlife in the local area.’

And according to the Semper team, this approach can be a source of inspiration for all our gardens.

‘When designing your own garden, it’s good to think about the wider landscape and how you can bring some of that into your own space,’ emphasises Craig.

‘It’s really nice to bring in plants that you can connect with on a personal level, or plants that can be useful to you,’ says Marina, ‘things you can cook with or use as raw materials.’

Considered lighting

Despite their work having such a defining focus on nature, the Semper team still firmly believe that artificial lighting has its place.

‘We use lighting to highlight textures within the planting and to illuminate key features in the garden. But when lighting a space, we also consider how it could affect wildlife,’ explains Craig.

Marina continues: ‘Although we like to light pathways, for instance, for the humans that use that space, we also need to create those areas of dark so that the wildlife isn’t affected by those lights.

‘In this garden, we’ve used Corston lights that can be angled down. We use them to highlight the pathway as well as particular plants and textures.’

‘And we like to select materials that age and weather over the years,’ adds Craig, ‘so we’ve selected the antique brass finish, which will only get better with time.

‘We have used the ground floodlight to illuminate the structure of a Magnolia tree, but in such cases, we will use a timer or a sensor so it’s only illuminating for a shorter period. It means you can really appreciate the tree, but it’s not going to affect the wildlife later into the night.’

Published on 18th June 2025