ABOUT
STUDIO PROFILE
Paperbark Landscape Design is an award-winning landscape studio based just outside Berry, on the NSW South Coast, specialising in large-scale country and coastal properties - landscapes where the brief is as much about resilience as it is about beauty.
Each project is conceived as a complete composition - architectural in structure, generous in planting, and engineered to endure exposed sites and rural conditions without compromising on refinement. Sustainability is central to this approach, working with the land's natural systems to create gardens that thrive with a lighter hand over time.
At its heart, our work is about balance: between the character of the land, the architecture it surrounds, and the way our clients live. We design gardens as a place of joy and respite - calm, grounded spaces that restore connection to nature, and generous settings for effortless entertaining. The result is elegant and timeless, yet always shaped around modern family life.
We work closely with a trusted network of local architects, builders, landscape contractors and craftspeople, ensuring every design is realised with the same precision and integrity with which it was drawn.
Led by creative director Michael Bligh, Paperbark brings a rare combination of design sensibility and hands-on horticultural expertise to every property we touch.
MEET THE DIRECTOR
MICHAEL BLIGH
For Michael, landscape design has never just been about how a garden looks - it's about how it holds a family's life. Every property he works on becomes a place of memories, routines and gatherings, and he takes seriously the responsibility that comes with shaping that.
That's reflected in how Paperbark works: Michael spends real time understanding a client's site and how they actually want to live in it, before a single line is drawn. Design decisions are made together, not handed down - the result is a garden that feels personal, because it is.
Michael grew up on a cotton and table grape farm in St George, Queensland. With this rural upbringing, he developed an early and lasting love of the land, spending his childhood - and every spare minute since - with his hands in the soil. Farm life meant a bit of everything: growing crops, building gardens, fixing irrigation, and operating tractors, cotton pickers and mini excavators. Whatever needed doing, he did it.
After a decade spent as a director in digital advertising, managing large teams and working with clients including Yahoo!, Samsung and Telstra across Sydney and London, he knew it was time to return to his real passion: gardens and landscape.
Michael holds a Design Degree from the University of Sydney and a Diploma of Landscape Design with Distinction from Ryde School of Horticulture. That formal design training is matched by a genuinely hands-on, practical nature - so you don't just get a beautiful design, you get one that landscapers and construction teams can actually build. Creative and innovative, but anchored in what really works on the ground, and ensuring a seamless client experience.
Michael lives in Berry with his wife and daughters, and remains a loyal (and long-suffering) supporter of the Queensland Reds.
