Flynn Hart

Flynn established Pollen with a deep conviction that stewardship and a sense of shared responsibility to land, ecologies, climate and Country should be central to all landscape architectural practice. 

He helps to actively build a world where landscape architecture plays a leading role in meeting generational challenges like climate change adaptation and Indigenous self-determination by always working for the benefit of communities and their environment. 

With over twelve years growing Pollen, he has guided, collaborated and supported communities, clients and stakeholders through design, consultation, management and delivery of spaces, places and landscapes in urban and rural places. 

With a passion for, and foundation in, sustainable thinking, Flynn has built a team with heart that deliver positive social and environmental places that grow and adapt with their community into the future. While Pollen is equally at home in urban and regional landscapes, Flynn’s childhood growing up in rural Victorian and Tasmanian island settings means he has a special interest in delivering ambitious projects for communities living off the beaten track. 

He divides his time between Pollen’s Melbourne office and his home studio in Castlemaine. In the latter, when he’s not leading Pollen, you can find him monitoring his beehive, taming his rambunctious garden and vegetable patches with his family. 

Chris Cham

Chris takes a creative and pragmatic approach to designing landscapes for the future. As a Senior Landscape Architect, she leads and supports the team across a range of exciting and complex projects, to craft dynamic and resilient landscapes. She has worked in New South Wales and Victoria over a number of years, and approaches practice with thought and focus on experiences and changes that may influence design outcomes and how everything comes together. 

Her interests lie in wilderness experiences, repurposing residual infrastructure, urban in-fill, storytelling and visual art within landscapes. She believes in creating welcoming and inclusive experiences and is keen to explore ideas that feed into the awe and wonderment of discovery and engagement with place. 

She is often with a Copic, paintbrush, or stylus in hand, working through concepts and figuring out how elements come together. When she’s not drawing, she’s out collecting natural, fallen materials as inspiration whilst exploring creeks, parklands and spaces in-between. 

Her love of colours and patterns often find their way into plans and planting palettes, with favourite plants of banksias, grevilleas and proteas. 

Bede Brennan

Bede is interested in how people understand and interact with the non-human world. As a Senior Landscape Architect, he brings this curiosity to his leadership and practice. He has had a wide range of project experience through Pollen, as an independent consultant and in an academic role at the University of Melbourne. Over the past six years, he has been a tutor and lecturer across a range of undergraduate and postgraduate subjects within the design and geography faculties.

He has a way with words, weaving stories through design and bringing people together onsite. With a love for writing, his work has been featured in The Planthunter, Kerb Journal, LA+ Magazine and Smith Journal amongst others. Bede continues to explore his passion for landscape, comedy and theory through public speaking, and has presented his ideas at the MPavillion (2021), The International Festival of Landscape Architecture (2019) and Eco-Arts Australis Conference (2016). His recent work with architect Vishnu Hazel was featured within the Salon des Refusés as part of the LA+ Creature international design competition.

As a keen vegetable gardener, his front yard is overflowing with unusual plant varieties. He saves seeds and trades them with his neighbours. His small flock of chickens keeps him company when he is at his home studio.

Matt McKone

Matt believes in the power of design to bring people closer to nature, whether it be within the wilderness or suburb. As a landscape architect at Pollen, Matt has supported and led a variety of projects at different scales. He has been instrumental within the Danks St and Bothwell St bio-link projects, in collaboration with Conservation Volunteers Australia and the University of Melbourne to bring biodiversity back to urban areas within the City of Port Phillip.

Hailing from New Zealand, his theoretical studies have honed his interest areas within practice, whilst hands-on experience within the construction industry, completing his Horticultural apprenticeship working on residential landscape construction projects, guides his appreciation of built landscape outcomes.

He loves the outdoors and his thesis, Enabling Wilderness, proposes the idea of a wheelchair accessible multi-day hike within New Zealand. The outcome led him to become an advocate for inclusive design within wilderness areas; using his spare time to assist the New Zealand organisation, Accessible Outdoors, to explore ways to make the next ‘Great Walk’ accessible. 

Liv Bloch

Olivia has a passion for tackling climate change through ecologically-driven design. She has a keen interest in adaptive design to address the changing climate and to minimise the urban heat island effect in clever ways. Her strengths have played a role in projects on both large public open space through to smaller park design. 

With an undergraduate in Fine Art at RMIT University and a Masters of Landscape Architecture at the University of Melbourne, Olivia brings her love of colour, textures and materials into her creative process. Her thesis, envisioning how COVID-19 could provoke a change in public space design, is timely and highlights urban disaster resilience through infrastructure. Her passion for future-driven outcomes has led to Olivia being shortlisted in the Future Park Design Ideas Competition, as part of the 2019 Festival of Landscape Architecture.

In her spare time exploring the Royal Botanical Gardens Victoria, her local park, Olivia expands her ever-growing plant knowledge through sketches and observations. 

Liam Fenaughty

Liam values collaboration and connection and believes that through purposefully sharing and listening to each others stories we can collectively design with care and sensitivity. 

His 20+ years experience in the construction and horticulture industries have led to an appreciation for the details, materials and processes embedded within our landscape. With this comes a passion for making and deep understanding which he continues to experiment with in his practice. 

He has a broad range of interests within landscape architecture including landscape adaptability, regenerative practices, topographic function and human relationships to landscape. 

As a previous editor of Kerb Journal and a Wild Cities Panel Member he is able to encourage discussion and connect ideas across associated disciplines.

Having grown up and still currently living in Geelong he is passionate about nurturing a continued connection to the land.  He is inspired by the variety of plant communities and patterns forming within the landscape. You will often find him walking and camping in the Otways or at the beach with family.

Izzy David

Having grown up in regional Victoria, Izzy brings a sensitivity to and knowledge of the workings of regional communities and is passionate about generating meaningful, community-driven outcomes through her work. 

Since joining the Pollen team in 2023, Izzy has supported a variety of projects at different scales, including masterplanning, playspaces, waterways and walking trails. Her particular interest in carbon-positive design has led her to pursue research into carbon calculations and material origins, helping her to gain a clearer picture of the environmental impact of each project.

Alongside her work, she is currently completing a Master of Landscape Architecture at RMIT where she continues to develop her critical design practice and helps to organise social events and volunteer opportunities with her peers. 

Outside of the studio, Izzy can be found at a life drawing class, wandering the Merri Creek and squeezing in ocean swims wherever she can.