About

About Chris

Garden designer and plantsman, working across Somerset, East Devon and Exmoor. Thirty years of designing, planting and looking after gardens — about sixty completed to date, several of them under continuous care for decades.

The path here

Chris has been gardening for as long as he has been able to walk. At three, he was given his own small plot — vegetables and toy soldiers in equal measure. He left school for Cannington College in Somerset, earning the NCH and ANCH in horticulture over two years, then spent the following years working in some of the larger gardens in the country as a professional gardener. That practical apprenticeship — the soil, the seasons, the plants themselves — is the foundation underneath everything that came later.

In 1997 the path bent toward design. Chris studied garden design at Hadlow, part of Greenwich University, graduating in 2000 with a BA (Hons). His own design practice followed, set up in West Somerset around the Quantock Hills. These days he and his partner live further south, in the Blackdown Hills above Hemyock.

The practice today

Pre-registered member of the Society of Garden Designers, working towards full registration. The work spans new gardens, restorations of old ones, and head-gardener consultancy on the larger projects that need someone to hold the long view across years. Clients are involved at every stage — Chris's role is to help the client find their own garden, not to impose one on them.

Sourcing is local where it can be. Native and wildlife-friendly planting where it fits. Organic principles when they work in practice rather than only in theory. Awareness of the wider landscape, the views out, the trees beyond the boundary — none of it can be designed in isolation.

Outside the gardens

At seven or eight, a small cactus arrived. It multiplied. The passion never went away. Habitat conservation has taken Chris to Brazil more than once, supporting projects to protect cacti in the wild. The two interests — designed cultivation and wild conservation — turn out to inform each other more than either looks like it would.