About Phillip

From Cambridge, England to Durham, North Carolina

I'm Phillip Ellis, a dual US and UK citizen. I spent most of my working life in England, where construction was the family trade. I was on my first building site at twelve, working alongside a local builder in Rutland through my school years. That's where I learned to sequence work properly, to let each trade finish before the next starts, and to keep a site organised, because a disorganised site costs everybody money.

After studying computer science at Anglia Ruskin and working in technical and systems roles, including network infrastructure and clinical systems at Papworth Hospital, I came back to the trade. I started working in construction in Cambridge in 2014 and by 2018 had built The Cambridge Landscaper into a landscaping and design-and-build company. Over the following years we completed more than £3m (around $4.0m) of work, much of it on live, safety-conscious sites such as the Imperial War Museum at Duxford, NHS sites, schools and council grounds, alongside private homes and estates.

Plants were always the part I loved most. I trained with the Cambridge University Botanic Garden, and I've designed and planted everything from small cottage borders to biodiversity schemes and wildflower meadows. You can see some of that work in my featured projects and planting case studies.

I sold the business and moved to North Carolina when my partner took a job at Duke University Hospital. Rather than build another company with crews, vans and overheads, I've chosen to do the part I enjoy and that adds the most value for clients.

What I do now

I help people find the design that works for them, not for the contractor. That means:

• Planting design: a clear plan of what goes where, chosen for your soil, light and maintenance budget, with a strong lean towards North Carolina natives.
• Design and planning: layouts, measurements and phasing, often started online with Google Earth, a sketch and your photos.
• Contract management: written scopes, fair prices, checked variations and a proper handover, the way large clients expected in the UK.
• Contractor screening: help choosing and checking landscapers, comparing quotes like-for-like and spotting inflated prices.
• Planting: I still love getting plants in the ground, priced transparently at 2.5× plant cost.

Training for licensure in North Carolina

I'm working towards licensure as a landscape architect in North Carolina through the CLARB route, gaining supervised experience hours for the North Carolina Board of Landscape Architects. Until I'm licensed here, I don't offer landscape architecture services in North Carolina; my work here is planting design, garden planning, contract management and planting.

I also continue to run PELA, my UK landscape design consultancy, working remotely on projects in England such as healthcare gardens, community orchards and urban schemes.