Natural gardens are our jam
Habitate is here to help you create a beautiful landscape for your home. From serene flower and native gardens to gardens that are packed full of diverse and delicious herbs and vegetables, and drip with gorgeous fruit.
Habitate: verb. to live in an abundant, beautiful, deeply satisfying natural landscape.
Based in Coastal Otago, Aotearoa, we design, install, and manage natural and edible gardens, as well as supplying fruit trees through our nursery and publishing educational books and wall charts.
We offer a range of services that meet your needs and budget: urban gardens, lifestyle blocks, and farms. We love to work with both keen gardeners who need our expertise in natural and edible gardens, and with busy families who need help with design, install and ongoing garden management. See the scope of our experience and expertise on our projects page.
We work organically, with holistic permaculture design principles, to make gardens that are rich and diverse. We create healthy living soils supported by beautiful ground cover plants. When we make the whole garden hum with health, it is super satisfying to work in, because all of your actions have multiple benefits. We also love planting gorgeous native plants and naturalistic ornamental grass and herbaceous flower meadows. If this sounds like your kind of garden, get in touch to discuss the best way we can help.
Looking to buy super tasty, and healthy, fruit plants for your backyard?
Our nursery supplies delicious and easy to grow, disease resistant fruit trees, berry plants, and orchard support plants – grown organically right here in Otago. We lovingly pack them and deliver them to your door at planting time each winter.
Our books and wall charts provide inspiration and decades of accumulated local knowledge for successful home food growing. We love to make these visually and pattern rich, so they are a pleasure to use and have in the house!
We run workshops, open days, garden tours and autumn fruit tasting events. Sign up for our seasonal newsletter or join our socials at the bottom of our homepage so you don't miss any!
Thanks so much for supporting our family business - we continue to trial, observe, and compile edible plant info into an ever greater range of plants, books, poster and services to make home food growing more satisfying, successful and accessible for all.
Habitate is run by Jason Ross who lives with his family in coastal Otago on a quarter acre garden packed with food plants. He is passionate about making food growing enjoyable for all. With a Fine Arts degree and decades of hands-on horticulture experience, he blends creativity with a deep love of nature, to create thriving, resilient food gardens and educational publications. Inspired by wilderness, in his spare time you will find him in the surf, snow, or hiking with his family.
Bachelor of Fine Arts - Otago, with Rachael Rekena and Marilynn Webb
Organic Production Horticulture - Taste Nature Market Gardens with Mark Dickson
Landscaping Apprenticeship with Neville Stewart Landscaping, which included garden management with Richard Forbes and Jessie Campion
Permaculture Design Certificate - Robin Clayfield and Robina McCurdy
Gardening mates:
Kath Irvine
Kath and I had the best time and creative collaboration on our book Homegrown Fruit. I highly recommend that you check out her website and sign up to her passionate newsletter for incredibly valuable info about backyard food growing!
Rory Harding
We are lucky to have Rory work with us on Habitate nursery and garden projects. You will see him in our project photos getting stuff done! I highly recommend that you get along for a garden tour of George Street Orchard to see how much diversity and food can be packed creatively and gorgeously into a small inner city yard!