The story behind North Oasis Works
Laura Openshaw started North Oasis Works in spring 2017 after eight years working for a grounds-maintenance contractor where the pressure was always to move fast and move on. She'd trained properly at Myerscough College, spent two seasons doing planting design on a private estate in the Yorkshire Dales, and knew there was a better way to do this work. The name came from a conversation with her father, who used to say that a good garden is a small oasis. Not tropical, not showy, just a place where things are right. The 'North' is honest geography.
The first few years were mostly clearance and maintenance work, which suited Laura fine. It meant she got to know a lot of different gardens, a lot of different soils, and a lot of different ideas about what an outdoor space should do. By 2020 she'd built up enough of a portfolio to start taking on full design-and-build projects, and that's where the work really found its shape. She measures every site herself, draws the first plan by hand, and doesn't hand off the planting to someone who wasn't there for the survey. That habit of keeping the whole project in one pair of hands is the thing clients mention most when they recommend her.
These days North Oasis Works takes on around twelve to fifteen projects a year, mostly residential gardens but occasionally a small commercial courtyard or community growing space. The work is deliberate and unhurried. Laura still does the site surveys herself, still measures the borders by hand, and still comes back six weeks after completion to see how things have settled. If something isn't right, she fixes it. That's not a policy. It's just how she works.
Laura Openshaw spent eight years working for a regional grounds-maintenance contractor before striking out on her own in 2017. She trained in horticulture at Myerscough College and later spent two seasons doing planting design for a small estate in the Yorkshire Dales, where she developed a preference for native species and honest, unfussy layouts. What brought her to start North Oasis Works was a single overgrown back garden she transformed for a neighbour on a weekend. The neighbour cried, and Laura realised she wanted to do that every week. She keeps a worn copy of Christopher Lloyd's "The Well-Tempered Garden" on her desk and still measures every border by hand before she draws anything on paper.