The horticultural industry is mourning the loss of Nigel Dunnett, who has passed away from cancer at the age of 63. Nigel was an internationally renowned landscape designer, author and Professor of Planting Design and Vegetation Technology in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of Sheffield. Widely celebrated for his innovative public and urban landscaping projects and ecological and naturalistic planting, he has been one of the most influential figures in horticulture in the past decades.
The Society of Garden and Landscape Designers (SGLD) said his influence on contemporary planting design was profound. “Nigel’s work combined ecological sensitivity with a bold, painterly approach to planting, helping to reshape how we think about public landscapes and urban green spaces.”
Nigel was born in 1962 and grew up attending a small village school that ran a nature walk on Friday mornings, something he said ignited his love of wildflowers. “[The teacher] pointed out wildflowers, but she'd use the common names, like dog's mercury and lady's smock and cuckoo pint. Giving the plants names gave them personalities to me and they came alive. There was a magic there,” he said when he joined Gardens Illustrated editor Stephanie Mahon for our Talking Gardens podcast in 2024.
At home, Nigel’s parents were keen gardeners and gave him a small patch outside to grow salad plants. He also enjoyed reading about gardens, and discovered Christopher Lloyd's The Well-Tempered Garden aged 11. “It just completely changed my view of what gardening was – and made me laugh out loud,” Nigel told Stephanie.
With a degree in Botany from the University of Bristol and a PhD, Nigel joined the Department of Landscape at the University of Sheffield in 1994. By 2011, he had become Professor of Planting Design and Urban Horticulture. Working alongside fellow professor James Hitchmough, he was an influential figure at the university, helping to train not just landscape architects and garden designers, but landscape managers too.
Sally O'Halloran, who knew Nigel both as a lecturer, when she studied at Sheffield, and as a colleague, after joining the planting design team, says he had an extraordinary vision. "Where I often found myself asking him 'how?', he was never constrained by logistics!
"He inspired thousands of students through his teaching, but through international lectures, writing, social media, RHS flower shows and workshops, he found ways to connect with and inspire an even wider audience. He was a visionary teacher whose boundless energy will have a lasting influence."
Nigel is perhaps best known for his planting schemes for the London 2012 Olympic Park, which he described as a major landmark in his career. A result of a collaboration with James Hitchmough and garden designer Sarah Price, the wildflower meadows and naturalistic planting caused many passersby to stop and point, and even prompted fan mail.
From 2014, Nigel was involved in the Sheffield Grey to Green Project, which converted 1.6km of former highways into Europe’s biggest retrofitted sustainable drainage system. Nigel worked alongside landscape architect Zac Tudor on the planting design, creating the UK’s largest urban ‘Green Street’.
Another of Nigel’s most celebrated projects was his work on the gardens of London’s 1970s Brutalist icon, The Barbican – Europe’s largest arts centre all under one roof, and home to 4,000 people. When the 1980s planting led to water leaks in the spaces below, Nigel was invited to develop its replacement at Beech Gardens, which were replanted in 2015. As the second phase of planting began in 2025, Nigel wrote about the evolution of the project for Gardens Illustrated.
Following first phase of the regeneration, in 2018, Nigel was awarded the Landscape Institute Fellows Award for Most Outstanding Project, and became the first winner of the Landscape Institute Award for Planting Design, Public Horticulture and Strategic Ecology.
Four years later in 2022 came Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee, when Nigel worked with Grant Associates for Historic Royal Palaces to design a flower-filled landscape in the moat at the Tower of London. Over 20 million seeds were sown directly into the ground, including cornflowers, poppies and marigolds, which Nigel selected for colour impact.
Named ‘Superbloom’, the scheme was inspired by Nigel’s travels to California in 2019, during which a rare ‘superbloom’ of wildflowers transformed landscapes across the US southwest. “I’ve never experienced anything like it,” he said in his Talking Gardens podcast episode. Recalling the Platinum Jubilee, he added, “It was the most stressful project I've ever been involved with because the pressure was so high.”
The following year, Nigel was given lifetime Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) and awarded the RSA’s Royal Designer for Industry, a prestigious title also shared by the designers behind the jet engine, iPhone and Harry Potter film sets. In response, according to the University of Sheffield, he said: "I always emphasise that planting design is an artform, and for this discipline to be recognised by the RSA in the form of this award is really gratifying."
Nigel also founded Pictorial Meadows, selling bespoke meadow seed mixes, and providing installation and maintenance services. The business has been instrumental in researching and developing new approaches and products for developing and caring for naturalistic landscapes.
Nigel taught both online and in-person workshops for Garden Masterclass since it was founded by Annie Guilfoyle and Noel Kingsbury nine years ago. “Our friend Nigel was incredibly creative, enormously influential and hugely enthusiastic in his promotion of naturalistic planting," says Annie.
“He shared the teaching with Noel on our extremely successful Naturalist Planting Design Course, which has reached hundreds of students worldwide. Many have emailed us to share their thoughts and memories of Nigel; the overriding comment is that he was such a kind and considerate teacher.”
Annie added, “I have particular memories of working with Nigel on many live workshops, one in particular at The Hepworth [art gallery] in Wakefield, where the energy in the room was incredible. Nigel was well into his illness at this point, but he still managed to give so much to the students and I remember how energised he was by this workshop, so we immediately repeated it in Italy in 2024.”
Alongside Annie, Nigel was also a member of the selection committee for the annual Landscape Festival in Bergamo, Italy. “He created the most beautiful garden in the Piazza of Bergamo Alta during Covid,” she revealed, “and designed some permanent planting in the city of Bergamo Bassa, which looks amazing.”
Between 2010 and 2020, Nigel created six Main Avenue gardens at RHS Chelsea Flower Show, returning in 2025 for the first time since 2017 to create the Hospitalfield Arts Garden. This memorable ‘dunescape’ featured a dramatic, sculptural series of dune-like banks punctuated with wooden spines, as well as an artist’s studio. It was planted into sand, reflecting the current interest in using mineral materials such as sands and gravels as growing media to encourage and create highly diverse and resilient plantings.
“Chelsea is a place for new ideas, for experimentation, and to take risks, and that is certainly the spirit in which we have developed our garden,” Nigel said at the time. “We hope this garden will spark conversations about our changing gardening habits, as well as the importance of creating space for the arts in helping us understand and interpret our changing world.”
This summer will see the opening of another planted space developed by Nigel: the redesigned Grosvenor Square in London’s Mayfair. Through this project, Nigel hoped to set a new standard for biodiverse public spaces in the capital, “bringing the exuberance of a rich natural environment into a London square in a way that hasn't been done before.
“We are championing sustainability and climate-adaptation, swapping low diversity amenity grassland for sparkling flowering lawns, and creating extensive areas of new woodland plantings beneath the existing London Plane trees, to create new wildlife havens and gardens that will look fantastic year-round” [quoted on grosvenor.com].
Nigel also wrote four books, including The Dynamic Landscape, with James Hitchmough, in 2004, and the seminal Naturalistic Planting Design: The Essential Guide in 2019.
On our podcast in 2024, Nigel discussed his own garden, set in a former quarry and known for its unique, undulating log pile habitats. He said, “A garden can create this world that's separate from everyday life. It takes away the constraints, releasing these childlike feelings of wonder and joy.”
Viewing gardening as an artful process, Nigel described his concern about the loss of the art, or the joy of the craft, of gardening in public landscapes. “I see the creation of a garden and the act of nurturing it, as not just a practical maintenance thing and not just a scientific thing; it's an artful thing. There's a good proportion of gardeners who are artists. It's not just horticultural maintenance; it is something that touches people and allows people to express themselves.”
Discussing the value of gardening in public spaces, Nigel told Stephanie, “I think there's been a bit of embarrassment to be called a gardener in many cases, but we shouldn't be embarrassed at all. It's something to be proud of.”
Nigel was at the top of his game, with several projects in the pipeline. Just six days ago he shared a social media post about his involvement with the national memorial park to Queen Elizabeth II in London, being designed by Foster + Partners. He was also part of the design team on 18,000 square-metre urban garden currently being delivered as part of the Melbourne Arts Precinct Transformation Project in Australia, working alongside James Hitchmough and Australian horticulturist Jac Semmler of Super Bloom.
There is no doubt Nigel’s influence and impact across the industry have been huge, and the outpouring of grief on social media has highlighted just how respected, admired and loved he was. Over the years, many of the gardeners and designers featured in Gardens Illustrated have named him as a horticultural hero. As Annie Guilfoyle says, “Nigel’s legacy will live on through his inspirational teaching and accomplished designs around the world.”
Discover more of Nigel Dunnett’s work at Peveril Gardens, a rooftop community space built above some formerly derelict garages, next to one of London’s busiest roundabouts.
