Garden Design

As a sideline to sculpture, I’ve occasionally designed exotic gardens, some of them award-winning. My style is dramatic, featuring strong architectural plants.

I favour Mediterranean-zone plants from around the world, typified by the starburst shapes of palms, agaves and yuccas. 

Spiky foliage is my forte, with the focus on sun-loving dasylirions, aloes, nolinas, cycads, aeoniums and puyas. Lushness is provided by bananas, bamboos, bamboo palms, scheffleras and tree ferns, all of which thrive in dappled shade.

I plant succulents and cacti outdoors, always in conditions created to suit them.

Favourite fruit trees include peach, apricot, mulberry, pomegranate and citrus.

Top of my list of shrubs, which I use to soften edges, are pittosporum, daphniphyllum macropodum and trochodendron aralioides.

Natural rocks and terracotta pots often lend a Mediterranean accent to my designs. I mainly use stone to make beds, borders and landscapes. 

Visitors to my gardens sometimes remark on seeing what are usually regarded as houseplants – for instance aspidistra and prickly pear cacti – flourishing outdoors, pushing the boundaries of hardiness.

Here’s a recent article about our garden, published by the RHS in The Garden, July 2024: