cartography
Bespoke maps for sites that matter.
Each commission begins with what already exists — the survey data, the historical record, the character of the site — and builds outward from there. The result is accurate, legible, and designed for legacy.
The work is unhurried by design. The first proof reflects months of archival research and considered iteration — ensuring the finished piece is worthy of the landscape it interprets.
commission — 2025–2026
The Beale Arboretum
West Lodge Park, Hadley Wood, Hertfordshire · Map I: Main Arboretum
the commission
The Beale Arboretum at West Lodge Park is a nationally significant collection: over 800 specimen trees across 35 acres, including Plant Heritage National Collections of Hornbeam and Swamp Cypress, developed across four generations of the Beale family since 1963. The existing visitor map — hand-drawn from 1996, framed and displayed in the hotel — had served its time. The commission was to replace it with something worthy of the collection: an heirloom document that could guide guests, honour the estate's heritage, and be updated as the arboretum continues to grow.
the approach
The map organises the collection into family groupings rendered as soft watercolour washes — a natural register for a living collection, and a practical solution to the visual complexity of 800 trees whose canopies overlap and interweave. Hard zone boundaries would have imposed a false precision; watercolour allows adjacent collections to coexist on the page the way they coexist on the ground.
The palette was drawn from the site itself: a warm vellum ground, hornbeam-olive canopy washes, gilded ochre for paths and waymarkers, West Lodge brick for the building footprints. The compass rose was designed as a piece of estate heraldry — hornbeam leaves and catkins referencing the National Collection, an artist's palette in tribute to Mary Beale, the seventeenth-century painter whose work hangs in the hotel and whose surname connects the estate's history to its present owners.
"Dear Nik, what a lovely job you have done. This is all approved." — Andrew Beale, Managing Director
the result
A complete cartographic commission for the West Lodge Park arboretum. Executed with a natural watercolour register and bespoke typography to capture the organic reality of a living National Collection. Map I covers the main arboretum with sixteen numbered points of interest, full Latin and common name species labelling, and a scale bar translated into walking time to encourage guest exploration. Delivered as a wall-mount master, a brochure-optimised version, and high-resolution digital files.
The map now hangs in the hotel in the original 1996 frame it succeeds. Map II, covering the Top Field with Sequoia Avenue and the duplicate national collections, follows in 2026.
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