Abben Art garden design offers a unique service that aims to provide individual and independant guidance to you, the client, enabling you to head down a garden path that best suits your landscaping requirements, budget and time frame.

The process begins by contacting us via email or phone, this is when we arrange a mutually agreeable time for a meeting. Extensive experience with client's has proved it is always best, if in a partnership to have both parties attending the initial meeting. Make sure you don't have any other pressing engagements and have done some homework. For example, think about what you like and equally important what you don't like in gardens. We at Abben art have found magazines a useful tool for this. Create a scrapbook of ideas!

The initial garden consultation is valuable time spent with you the client. Here your individual garden needs are addressed, taking into account environmental factors such as drought tolerance of plants, soil conditions, wind exposure, availability of water and health of existing plants.

You may want to have pen and paper at hand to jot down some notes. We will then propose a course of action which will avoid expensive mistakes, enhance your lifestyle and the value of your property.

Below is a short biography on our chief designer Clive Abben.

We thank you for viewing our website and look forward to meeting with you.

Kind regards and happy gardening.

The team from Abben Art garden design.

Clive Abben has been featured in gardening magazines such as Country Style, The Weekly Times and Country Gardens. He has been involved in the horticultural industry for the past 30 years and his partner and wife Leanne for 20 years.

Clive trained in England as a garden designer and horticulturist, he then spent 10 years as manager of a rapidly expanding grounds maintenance and landscaping company based in Surrey U.K.

Clive moved to Australia with a young family in the early nineties where he managed a landscape team that designed and created innovative gardens specialising in dry stone walling and water features. It was during these early days Clive became involved  in the building of display gardens.

Clive's passion of plants and gardens lead him to the role of head gardener of a 3 acre Edna Walling property in Northern Victoria, here Clive developed the gardens and was delighted to share them with the public by opening them to bus tours and the Open Garden Scheme.

Clive's love of learning about the diversity of plants and environmental conditions has seen him basing himself in Rye on the Mornington Peninsula for the past 10 years.

Not long after arriving in Rye, Clive saw and was amazed by the sand sculptures on Rye's front beach. Excited by another artistic outlet, Clive involved himself in the art of sand sculpting, a passion that takes him to the Frankston foreshore to carve alongside local and international sculptors for a few weeks in December .

Clive has taught Landscape design at diploma level at Rosebud and Cranbourne TAFE for 8 years part time. His full time role was as head gardener of "The Village Glen" Rosebud. This position involved overseeing a substantial maintenance team and saw Clive sourcing and implementing the planting of approximately 45 acres of gardens, most of which had no irrigation. The knowledge of drought tolerant plants that thrive in a coastal situation has become a valuable tool for plant selection in Abben Art Garden Design.

With the creative aspect of The Village Glen's planting drawing to a close and having carried out private landscape design constantly through his career Clive decided to inject his vast knowledge into the establishment of Abben Art in August 2008.