Paul Shirley Smith

Paul has nearly 40 years experience as a landscape architect. After completing a BA and Postgraduate Diploma with Distinction at Manchester Polytechnic (now MMU) he started working with Robert Camlin in 1986, became a director at Camlins in 1999 and now leads the practice. He is from a family of artists and grew up in Marlborough, surrounded by The Downs and Savernake Forest, stimulating a strong sense of how landscapes can be richly engaging, hugely diverse and are shaped by our cultural and agricultural activity.

Paul’s professional approach can be described as creative, helpful and tenacious. His portfolio of completed work encompasses a huge range of landscape types, from urban regeneration to private gardens. He enjoys rewarding long term relationships with many clients and designers and is particularly interested in working creatively within a team to help to shape a design from the outset. A depth of experience helps him develop innovative ideas rapidly into proposals that are viable and actually get built.

While not working, Paul pedals over the hills around his Montgomeryshire home and tends the garden, not least to grow, cook and eat the best food. He is obsessed with GF Handel, the pan-European musical genius and impresario who ensured that rapidly evolving Georgian London was the most exciting place in the world. Paul completed Tour Aotearoa, a 2000 mile bikepacking Odyssey the length of New Zealand in 26 days, returning in March 2020, with only hours to spare, before the total covid-19 lockdown. Where next?