Tom Stuart-Smith

Questions for Tom Stuart-Smith

How long have you been designing gardens?

I started after I left school, borrowing my parents car and driving trailer loads of bricks around London making small back gardens for friends. That was in 1980. My first masterpiece was concreted over by an appreciative client.

Tell us a bit about other work, what achievements are you most proud of?

The first large private garden I made was Broughton Grange in the Oxfordshire countryside in 2000. It’s still one of the best things I have done and seems to be bearing up after eight years, although by the standards of most gardens this is no time at all.

Trentham in Staffordshire is extraordinary, not so much because of my contribution but because of the scale of what has been achieved in a place that was a dump only five years ago. It's truly spectacular to see 20 acres of perennial planting.

Who or what were your early influences?

My parents let me mess about in the garden at home and do all sorts of dreadful things. I spent all my pocket money on plants. Without that freedom to experiment I wouldn’t have caught the bug.

I was also very lucky to meet both Lanning Roper and Geoffrey Jellicoe when I was thinking about doing a second training in landscape design. By then they were both in their seventies and still enthralled by their work. I came away from meeting them thinking that if you can be fired up as that by your work after 50 years it must be pretty good.

Are you a gardener as well as a designer? Do you have your own garden and how would you describe it?

We have a country garden of a couple of acres near a motorway junction. The setting is beautiful but there are always interesting things going on like police sirens in the distance, or people dumping rubbish in the lane. This used to bug me. Now I try to think that the proximity of chaos makes the beautiful bits more beautiful by comparison. Sometimes this takes an effort. The garden has a strong structure of hedges and trees and planting that is quite rampant at times. It's not what I would do for other people but it works for us - my wife Sue, three children, two delinquent dogs and me.

What five plants could you never do without?

I don't think any exotic plants are indispensable. The plants I would really miss are those that are most familiar and part of our landscape such as oak, beech, bluebell, primrose, cowslip. But that’s rather a smug and virtuous answer. The alternative answer would be Echinacea purpurea, Cornus kousa, Hakonechloa macra,olinia caerulea, Buxus sempervirens. A slightly random selection but as good as any I can think of.

What materials do you like to use in the garden?

Any that are local or seem to accentuate that quality of a place. So rusty metal might be right by the sea, flint in the Chilterns. Glass on a city rooftop perhaps. Some materials can potentially be used anywhere, such as timber, and York stone almost comes into this category within much of England. I never use plastic.

What's the most common problem you come across when designing a garden and how do you overcome it?

I think part of the secret of good design is turning problems into opportunities. It's only if one has a prejudice about how a place should be treated that you run into trouble. Levels are one of the biggest challenges the garden designer faces. I make a three dimensional digital model of all gardens I work on and this helps to iron out these problems.

What is your biggest design or gardening mistake?

Probably that leyland cypress hedge I planted in my parents garden when I was 17. I was allowed to take it out three years later provided I found a home for all the trees somewhere else in the garden. I spent the next ten years paying secret visits to these deposed thugs armed with a machete and a pot of Roundup. I think there are still about five left - nearly 60 feet tall.

What's your favourite garden to visit and why?

This is impossible to answer, but confining myself to the UK I would say Rousham in Oxfordshire, the masterpiece of William Kent laid out in the 1740s. This isn't (I hope ), because I'm an old fogey and old things are best, but because it is a mysterious, elegiac, and endlessly beguiling place which can teach us moderns a thing or two about how to engage and seduce an audience.

If you could design a garden for anyone, who would it be and why?

Somebody who wasn't interested in gardening but was interested in the idea of what a garden could mean. Jonathan Miller? A dead person perhaps. Verdi would have been fun.

How would you describe your design style?

My work is understatedly modern and often contrasts a very simple architectural framework with a diverse and naturalistic planting style which is rooted in the identity of a place. I try to make gardens in which people feel that they are not being bossed about - told what to look at and where to go. I try to make gardens that can be easily looked after and enjoyed; not showy, ice-cool set pieces where a blade of grass out of place causes a fainting fit.

What's the one piece of advice you’d give to someone starting out with a new garden?

Get rid of the weeds and think long term. You will always regret a compromise.