Indie brand strategy and creative shop The Garden has joined The Humanise Collective, the agency announced on Wednesday.

Humanise is a collective of eight independent, locally owned agencies that draw from complementary disciplines in communications. The collective’s expertise includes marketing advisory services, integrated media planning and buying, data and analytics, brand strategy, experience design, and breakthrough creative in both English and French. The collective’s separate agencies operate independently, while partnering to develop solutions to new challenges their clients face.

The Garden, led by co-founder and chief strategy officer Shari Walczak and co-founder and chief creative officer Shane Ogilvie, is a creative agency that’s contributed work in the past for such brands as Samsung, Rakuten Kobo, Carlsberg, Roots, Jack Astor’s, Sodastream and Bioré.

“The arrival of The Garden at Humanise opens up new perspectives for the collective’s clients. Under the leadership of two recognized experts in their fields, with deep roots in our industry in Toronto, clients get access to a greater range of specialized services and in-depth brand strategy and creative expertise,” said Sébastien Fauré, Humanise co-founder and senior partner, and Bleublancrouge CEO.

The move helps The Garden secure support from Humanise and its other member agencies, which include Bleublancrouge, Glassroom, Fieldtrip, L’Institut Idée, Tulipe, BrandBourg and GSM. It’ll both allow The Garden to provide its own expertise to clients within the collective, and to better serve its own clients now and in the future.

“While we’ve been approached by different organizations over the years, we felt an instant connection with the leaders of Humanise,” Ogilvie said. “Not only in their holding company structure that propels entrepreneurial-minded leaders to create value and facilitate transformational change for ambitious clients, but also in their people-first approach that strives to be a force for good in our industry and beyond.”

The move will have no impact on The Garden’s roster of clients, Ogilvie says. It also marks an effort by Humanise to gain a greater foothold in the Toronto market, and expand further. Fauré says the collective intends on continuing its growth in Toronto, and is eyeing international expansion in the future. But he says the collective’s immediate focus is its people and growing its bench where needed, not “topline growth,” and accomplishing this via good people and product.