Tim Richardson’s next guest in his ‘Gardener’s Cabinet’ series is Tom Stuart-Smith, the landscape designer, whose work ranges from eight Chelsea gold medals (and three ‘Best in Show’) to the Jardin Secret in Marrakesh to the succession of masterpieces which have taken the design of English country house gardens into the 21st century.
The ‘Gardener’s Cabinet’ has been conceived by Tim, garden historian and landscape critic, to learn the secrets of what makes great designers tick. Tom will pick eight items – from a favourite book and piece of music to his favourite garden – and tell us how they have inspired his work.
Speaker Biographies
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Tom Stuart-Smith
Tom Stuart-Smith
Tom Stuart-Smith read Zoology at Cambridge before completing a postgraduate degree in Landscape Design at Manchester University. After working with Hal Moggridge and then with Elizabeth Banks he set up his own practice in 1998.
Projects include a number of large private gardens in the English countryside, including Broughton Grange and Woodperry in Oxfordshire, Mount St John in Yorkshire, Fort Belvedere in Windsor Great Park and a new garden at Windsor Castle commissioned by the Royal Household to mark the Queen's Golden Jubilee. He was also responsible for the Landscape Masterplan at Trentham and the recasting of its Italian garden, the largest formal garden in England.
More recent work includes the two hectare garden around the Bicentenary Glasshouse at Wisley for the RHS which was opened to the public by The Queen in June 2007. Tom has also designed a number of smaller inner city gardens including The Garden of Illusion at The Connaught and the Keeper’s House Garden at the Royal Academy of Arts. Tom continues to work on numerous overseas projects throughout Europe, India, USA and Caribbean.
Tom has designed eight Gold Medal winning gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show and this includes three being awarded best in show. An exhibition on his work, the first about a living garden designer in the UK, was held at the Garden Museum in London in 2011.
He writes occasionally for the Guardian, Financial Times and Telegraph, amongst others, and has lectured widely in the UK, Europe and USA. -
Tim Richardson
Tim Richardson
Tim Richardson, garden historian and landscape critic, is an irreverent commentator on all matters pertaining to gardens. He was gardens editor at Country Life, at *Wallpaper magazine and edited New Eden, the contemporary gardens magazine. He is now a regular columnist in the gardening pages of the Daily Telegraph.