Hi there, I’m Lily Bakratsa, creator and owner of It’s All Green To Me.
I am a landscape architect with a background in architecture and a diploma in professional gardening. In 2013 I was working as a landscape architect in London, spending most of my day in front of a screen working in AutoCAD. Though I loved my work, I felt there was something missing from my professional life: the practical implementation of what I was designing, the opportunity to learn from nature and get my hands dirty.
After eight years of working as an architect and landscape architect for design companies in London and Greece, I decided to follow my own route and work on projects that inspire and challenge me. Somewhere along the way, I bumped into Yannis Papantoniou, a friend and a horticulturist specialising in soil and plant nutrition, and we decided to join forces. We currently work together on design projects of all scales, mostly for private clients.
Yannis and I both love the practical side of our professions, and at the same time we’re keen to pass on our plant knowledge to others. So, besides working for design projects together, we also organise gardening workshops in London and abroad for people who are complete beginners. Some of our attendees are architects or landscape architects who lack hands-on experience and others are previous clients of ours or keen amateurs.
Luckily, we’re not on our own in our garden workshops. We often collaborate with other specialists in the field: builders, gardeners, food growers, writers and botanists. We have worked with prestigious institutions such as The Royal Institute of British Architects, the Garden Museum and many others, who have been loyal clients since then.
This is how It’s All Green To Me* was born, in 2016. We are a small design consultancy focusing on architecture, gardens and landscapes, and are also passionate about educating and inspiring people in urban environments to get their hands dirty, to explore their green surroundings using all their senses, and to think more deeply about nature and the way it works.
*Referencing the expression ‘It’s all Greek to me’, meaning ‘I do not understand it’.