Landscape atelier · French Riviera — Provence
we design gardens that come to resemble the people who live in them.
Cap Society isn't just a landscaping company. We read each piece of land as an extension of the people who live there — its stone, its trees, its light — and shape it slowly, without hurry.
restraint, rather than spectacle.
We believe a beautiful garden has nothing to prove. A simple vocabulary, repeated with care, says far more than elements and effects that try too hard. Local stone matters more than marble from elsewhere, and the age of an olive tree more than its size.
Our gardens are calm, mineral, at ease in their place. They don't try to be noticed: they age well — and that is the whole of the work.
Yet calm is not emptiness. We compose the quiet abundance of Mediterranean nature — its layers of green, its shade, its slow rhythm — so a garden becomes a resource: a place that settles the nervous system and brings you back to yourself. That abundance is a gentle joy, one that loosens the day's tension and gives back, season after season, far more than it asks.
we listen to the place before we draw.
read the place
It all begins with careful observation: the stone, the water, the light, the wind. The design comes after — out of what the land already knows.
a simple vocabulary
A few Mediterranean plants, thrifty with water, chosen and then repeated until they feel inevitable.
think in decades
A garden is drawn over the long term. Ours look as though they have stood for decades — and, designed in harmony with nature, they will endure for decades more, growing only more themselves with time.
by hand, before the screen.
Every project begins on paper. We survey, we sketch, we draw the plans by hand — because a hand hesitates where software decides too quickly. A line drawn by hand carries a softness the screen can't imitate: it breathes, and it is simply more beautiful.
Materials are chosen the same way: a chip of stone, an olive leaf, an earth tone laid side by side until the whole thing rings true.
the drawing of a place.
a few places we have drawn.
Each garden keeps the measure of its ground — water, shade, and an olive so well placed it looks as though it had always been there, framed by the window.
Roquefort-les-Pins
A stone house set in the pines, a gently sloping site, the clear light of the coast.
The brief: a pool that looks as though it had always been there, a terrace for dining outdoors, a pavilion for the afternoon. Nothing that forces the place.
We kept the trees, opened a few views, and placed a century-old olive so precisely that, seen from the window, it looks as though it had always grown there.
a dining set, made to measure.
Alongside the gardens, the atelier designs bespoke outdoor furniture. This dining set was born of a garden short on space: rather than fight the constraint, we drew every piece to measure.
Curved to follow the terrace and dressed in terracotta, it turns a tight corner into a generous place to gather — comfortable, unforced, and so well judged that the limits of the site disappear. Nothing feels lacking. Everything feels meant to be.
the hand behind the atelier
A garden should feel like it was always meant to be yours. I'm Martina Nail — an engineer of landscape architecture, and that belief is where Cap Society began: honouring a place's history, and designing its future around the people who live there.
What I love about this work is the search for it: finding inventive solutions, offering people options they didn't yet know they were longing for, and putting words to the frustrations they've never quite been able to name. I love drawing, the creative process, and the remarkable craftsmanship of everyone who comes together to shape an outdoor space.
I hold an engineering degree in landscape architecture from the Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra. I went on to practise in Ireland, in both the public and private sectors in Dublin, before spending years within a landscape atelier serving a prestigious international clientele — grand private estates and public gardens, from the Riviera to Monaco, from historic villas to gardens overlooking the sea. I followed each project from the first sketch to the finest construction detail, alongside internationally renowned architects and engineers.
With Cap Society I continue that work at my own scale: calm, balanced Mediterranean gardens — beautifully composed and full of life, made to age with grace. I work in French, English, Slovak and Czech.
get in touch.
You'll probably enjoy working with us if you love creating a beautiful life and beautiful experiences — and if you value thoughtful advice and choosing the right person to bring your vision to life. Write us a message. We speak English, French, Slovak and Czech.
WhereFrench Riviera — Provence