Kennedy Garden Retreats required a bespoke WordPress site built from a highly visual, print-inspired design - featuring overlapping sections, floating imagery, and unconventional layouts.

The challenge was to preserve design fidelity while delivering a flexible Gutenberg-based editing experience for non-technical users.

The project later formed the foundation for multiple related brand sites within the Kennedy Group.

• Build a fully custom WordPress theme using Gutenberg blocks
• Translate complex, non-grid design into structured components
• Ensure responsive behaviour across breakpoints
• Maintain ease of editing for the internal team
• Enable reuse across related brand sites

The design prioritised visual impact, which meant the development required careful structural planning.

Rather than relying on rigid templates, I broke the layout into modular, reusable Gutenberg blocks.

Key considerations included:

• Converting overlapping visual elements into maintainable block structures
• Managing layered backgrounds and floating images
• Preserving spacing relationships across screen sizes
• Preventing layout breakage during content editing

Each block was designed with:

• Clear editing controls
• Guardrails to maintain visual integrity
• Responsive behaviour built into the system

Because the original design behaved more like a print layout than a traditional web grid, significant effort went into:

• Reworking column logic for smaller screens
• Managing image stacking and overlap behaviour
• Ensuring performance and layout consistency across devices

The result is a visually distinctive site that remains stable and predictable on mobile.

The theme architecture was later reused across additional Kennedy Group brands:

• The Kennedy Group
• Kennedy Landscapes
• Kennedy Construction

Each site retained its own branding and content while sharing a common structural foundation.

This demonstrates how a carefully structured Gutenberg system can scale across related brands without duplicating development effort.

• High-fidelity implementation of a complex visual design
• Flexible block-based editing for internal teams
• Responsive stability despite unconventional layout
• Reusable theme architecture across multiple sites

The project highlights translating ambitious design into structured, maintainable WordPress systems.

Built for Studio Gallant.
Design direction provided by Studio Gallant.
Theme architecture and Gutenberg implementation by Taran Stafford