Meet Sarah
Founder and lead designer at Wild Atlantic Gardens
Hello!
At the heart of Wild Atlantic Gardens is lead designer, Dr Sarah Cotterill, an award-winning designer and Assistant Professor in Civil Engineering at University College Dublin. With a background in sustainable water management and ecology, Sarah approaches each project with both precision and artistic flair, designing gardens which are as resilient as they are beautiful.
Sarah’s journey began with an Honours degree in Biology where she immersed herself in plant physiology, classification, plant nutrition and pest management. Her studies also took her into the field identifying native trees, wildflowers and ferns and learning how ecosystems can be understood, protected and nurtured.
She later went on to study for a PhD in Civil Engineering, with a specialism in water engineering. Over the last 14 years, she has led research projects exploring sustainable water management (see her research portfolio here). This crosses over into her design work with many of her gardens designed with water in mind; thinking about how it moves, how it sustains wildlife and how it can be harnessed in landscape design.
Sarah has designed award-winning gardens - including her 2024 RHS Hampton Court Garden Festival Resilient Planting Pocket, “The Ripple Effect Raingarden”, which received a Silver Medal, and her 2025 Bord Bia Bloom small showgarden, “Into the Forest” for which she received the Cultivating Talent Award and a Silver Medal.
Alongside her design work, Sarah is a regular on Classic Drive on RTE LyricFM, co-hosting the gardening feature “In Season with Sarah Cotterill” with Lorcan Murray. You can listen to past episodes here:
Company OverviewWild Atlantic Gardens is a garden design studio based in Ballina, County Mayo, creating timeless, nature-led landscapes along Ireland’s wild Atlantic coast. Our work is inspired by the soft, shifting beauty of Ireland’s western landscapes, from coastal woodlands to windswept shorelines. We aim to create gardens that feel restorative, layered and deeply connected to their surroundings.
At Wild Atlantic Gardens, every project is entirely bespoke. We collaborate closely with our clients to understand how they wish to live in and experience their outdoor space, crafting designs that balance structure, atmosphere and seasonality. Our planting-led approach ensures year-round interest, combining refined palettes with carefully selected materials. Sustainability underpins all of our decisions, from plant selection to water-sensitive design, ensuring that each garden will thrive for years to come.
To maintain the level of integrity of our work and the level of service we offer, we take on a limited number of projects each season. This allows us to dedicate genuine care, creativity and attention to every garden we design. As a result, not every enquiry will be the right fit. That might be due to project scope, timeline, budget or design alignment. Following your enquiry we will carefully review your brief and confirm whether we feel we are the right studio for your project.
Whether we are designing an intimate courtyard or a substantial private estate, our aim is always the same: to create gardens that feel effortless, enduring and uniquely yours, with places to pause, gather and reconnect with nature.