M&G Garden 2016

One of the attractions of show gardens is that you can create something that ordinarily you wouldn’t have a chance to in a private garden.

An introduction to a film about forests said, “Carry the forest within you and you’ll always be home.” This is precisely what I was trying to express with the M&G Garden albeit within a very contrived and contemporary framework – a conceptual representation of “home is where the heart is”.

Perhaps even more self-indulgent than the Telegraph garden, this was an opportunity to reflect on part of my youth (spent on Exmoor National Park) that played an important part in my eventual decision to become a landscape designer. In a way, this proved something I’ve always suspected, that gardens are often more powerful when created by the owner. I knew this garden intimately before I’d even created it.