Gardens by Design creates contemporary residential gardens in Dubai
Elegant gardens for Dubai’s most considered homes, shaped by climate, designed with intent and refined in every detail.
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Emirates Living
Meadows -
Arabian Ranches
Al Reem -
Emirates Living
Zulal
An exceptional garden, expertly designed, with every detail delivered on your behalf.
I’m Tanja Boehm, founder of Dubai-based studio Gardens by Design. Formally trained in garden design, I create refined, contemporary gardens for discerning homeowners across Dubai’s more exclusive communities.
Working closely with trusted contractors, I ensure my design intent is realised with a level of precision and expertise that ensures your garden delivers everything you need it to: space to breathe and entertain in style, shade and privacy precisely where it’s needed and a lasting elegance you can enjoy.
The challenge
Designing gardens in the desert
In Dubai’s climate, a garden that’s not been designed simply doesn’t work. Shade falls in the wrong place, planting is squeezed into borders too narrow to soften anything and materials chosen for their aesthetic rarely survive a summer. These are the gardens I’m most often asked to put right. Impressive in a drawing but unlivable in reality.
Garden design is the discipline that prevents this. It begins with how the sun moves across your plot, which materials endure our heat and how you will actually live outdoors - all resolved before anything is built. It’s a creative process measured in months rather than weeks and the result is a garden that feels effortless, endures gracefully and holds its value when it’s time for you to move on.
“Our experience with Gardens by Design was fantastic! Tanja truly listened to our ideas and skillfully brought our vision to life, seamlessly incorporating her expertise with our space. Her ongoing commitment is remarkable.”
Lena - Jumeirah Luxury
Our Garden Design Services
I work in two ways: designing gardens from the very beginning or stepping in when a project has gone ahead without a garden design. Either way, you can trust that I’ll manage everything for you.
Full Garden Design
A complete service, from first site visit to final designs: a detailed brief, a bespoke concept and a full set of design drawings, with a trusted contractor to realise the work and an optional styling service to complete it.
late-stage Garden intervention
For gardens that have faltered, a previous garden that hasn’t endured or a build underway where the pool has claimed the space you’d imagined living in. I bring a clear, experienced eye to what remains, preserving what can be kept, correcting what cannot and resolving a compromised plot into a garden of genuine quality.
“Exceptional gardens are the product of thoughtful design, climate awareness and truly listening to how my clients live. When someone has been properly heard from the start, the design rarely misses.”
Expert Garden Designer
Meet Tanja Boehm
I trained at the London College of Garden Design at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, graduating with distinction. I’ve spent the last eight years applying that discipline to more than 128 gardens in Dubai. This experience shows in every decision I make: using alternative materials where timber would fail in our humidity, UAE-adapted planting chosen to thrive rather than just look good, texture and tone where flowers would not last the summer.
And every garden I design belongs to its place. I read the character of your community: its colours, its materials, its light, so that your garden speaks the same language as the landscape immediately around it and feels as though it could never have been anywhere else.
Journal
The Modern Desert Garden
My thoughts on design, climate-aware materials and living outdoors in Dubai
