Join us for a very special study day, devised for Garden Museum guests, with internationally renowned designer and garden historian George Carter. Using his own two-acre Norfolk gardens as a backdrop George will take us to the heart of the design process, explaining what inspires his dramatic formal designs, characterized by structural planting and architectural features.
The study day will take place partly in the converted barn beside George’s farmhouse (with room for social distancing) and partly within his formal gardens. With just 16 places the day will allow everyone plenty of opportunity to ask questions and you will leave with numerous ideas to apply to your own design projects.
After coffee in the barn, George will explain the design choices he has made in his own garden and later take us out to explore. His garden features a series of interconnecting, contrasting spaces divided by clipped beech and hornbeam hedges and ornamented with fanciful theatrical flourishes. Praised for his lightness of touch and his confident use of space, George trained as a sculptor so is accustomed to seeing the world in terms of volumes and voids. He is an expert on Humphrey Repton and has drawn inspiration from his studies of early Dutch and English garden design.
We will have a delicious two-course lunch with wine, under cover in the garden, after which we will have a chance to hear more about George’s designs and look at how he approaches the use of particular spaces in terms of creating vistas and ‘green architecture’.
Our day will conclude with tea and cakes, followed by a chance to explore the gardens again at your leisure.
George lives in a beautiful part of the north-west Norfolk countryside, 30 minutes’ drive from the coast at Blakeney; we hope that some guests might wish to make a long weekend of it by staying in the area.