Who would have thought that looking at photographs of fish, jellyfish, and coral under the sea would help us figure out what to do with our lawns?

Yet here we are.

We were studying photographs from beneath the sea. Branching coral, great rounded coral colonies, jellyfish with delicate hanging tentacles, sea fans, anemones, fields of seagrass, and colourful fish moving through it all.

The shapes were extraordinary. Some looked like trees. Others resembled flowers, mushrooms, giant cushions, folded fabric, or entire little landscapes.

We could imagine bringing these forms onto land through plants, stone, water, terrain, and unusual shade structures.

But something else caught our attention.

The Reef Gave Us More Than Shapes

Look at how a coral reef is arranged.

In some places, hundreds of living forms crowd together. They branch, overlap, spread, rise and settle at different heights. Some are soft and feathery. Others are hard, rounded, or full of little openings.

And then suddenly, open water.

There may be an enormous amount of life in one area, with great stretches of openness around it.

That relationship caught our attention because we have been working through something similar in our landscaping.

We want beautiful planting, dramatic stone bodies, water systems, orchards, unusual landforms, and public resting grounds.

We also want broad lawns, pasture, prairie, open sandy ground, and space for families to enjoy the land.

Some of our first landscape images were becoming crowded with beautiful things.

The reef photographs offered a wonderful way to think about how these different land bodies could live together.

Bringing the Underwater World onto Land

Branching coral can inspire flowering shrubs, small trees, and intricate planting colonies. Dome corals can influence rounded land rises, gathering stones, and shelter forms.

Sea fans suggest beautiful ribbed screens and shaded passages. Jellyfish offer ideas for broad, lightweight canopies with hanging planting or water chains.

Seagrass can become sweeping fields of grass that move with the wind.

Reef shelves can inspire productive terraces, planted stone levels, and the way we move between different heights of land.

Even the tiny colourful fish moving in groups gave us ideas for drifts of flowers travelling through larger green fields.

We can explore coral-inspired stone bodies that provide seating, support terraces, guide routes, carry planting, or help manage water.

And we can borrow the underwater world’s astonishing colours: pale creams, soft pinks, warm coral, golden yellows, sea-greens, and turquoise.

These colours can come from real flowers, foliage, crops, fruit, soil, mineral materials, and water.

What excites us most is the possibility of bringing entire relationships onto land: the layering, the clusters, the open spaces, and the transitions from one living world to another.

And Yes, We Still Want Lawns!

As we developed the first sea-inspired landscape images, some became very elaborate. Wonderful structures, colourful planting, water flowing through stone, sculptural forms everywhere.

Beautiful, yes.

But where were our great lawns?

I still want broad green ground where families can sit, children can run, people can lie down, and the eye can travel without meeting another decorative feature every few feet.

The sea-world ideas should make these lawns even more interesting.

Imagine a great lawn surrounded by soft coral-inspired planting. Perhaps the edges rise gently into colourful colonies, then fade into longer grasses.

Beyond that, an orchard. A rocky transition. A stream. Maybe a shaded passage inspired by a sea fan.

And plenty of green ground remaining open.

There can be different degrees of management across the same territory: shorter grass where families gather, longer grasses at the edges, flowering meadow beyond, then productive planting or woodland.

We want some landscapes to be rougher, looser, and less manicured.

Our routes can be beautifully constructed. Our water systems can be properly engineered. Our stonework can be excellent.

The planting and terrain can still grow with natural variation, irregular edges, and wonderfully uneven distributions.

Our Landscaping Matrix Has Grown

We already had a system for organizing created landscapes: TBF Landscaping Matrix V1.

It uses nine original categories to help us shape coherent, distinct territories.

The original matrix organizes four master landscape families: Coast Worlds, Productive Transition Worlds, Open Ground Worlds, and High / Shaped Worlds.

Our new TBF Sea–Land Landscaping Matrix V0.1 adds marine-inspired design choices to this foundation.

We now have additional libraries for sea forms, reef planting, lawn relationships, sea-derived stone, colour and texture, and marine-inspired public-land structures.

Each landscape can borrow selected ideas from these libraries while keeping its own terrain, planting, water, stone, routes, and open ground.

The Landscapes We Are Developing

These first visual studies have already opened several directions.

These are visual design studies. We are developing the landscape relationships first, then examining the practical details of planting, construction, drainage, water movement, and long-term use.

The Land Has Many More Teachers

This discovery has opened another possibility.

What other natural worlds can we study for the ways they arrange life?

A forest canopy has its own layers of light, shade, height, and openings. River systems branch through valleys and plains. Grasslands carry enormous open fields with scattered areas of concentrated life.

We have been exploring the underwater world first, and it has already given us an extraordinary amount to work with.

There is much more to study.