When Debbie Roberts and Ian Smith returned to their native West Sussex in 1988, after meeting on the landscape architecture degree course at what was then Leeds Polytechnic, they both knew they didn’t want to spend their days designing planting schemes for car parks and motorway verges.
Back then, there weren’t many people designing the private gardens they felt would give them the creativity they craved – just a few big names such as John Brookes, Arabella Lennox-Boyd and David Stevens – but a chance visit to a local nursery looking for work led to their first client.
Both were passionate about conservation, and knew from the outset that they wanted to take an ecological approach to the gardens they designed. This was reflected in the name they chose. “It began as Wild Acres, but that wasn’t going to rank us high enough in the directories, so we switched it round,” says Debbie.
Thirty-seven years later, Debbie and Ian are still designing gardens together and have built up one of the UK’s most respected practices. They have been awarded the Society of Garden and Landscape Designers Large Residential Garden Award three times and were both made Fellows of the Society in 2022. Best known for designing country gardens in southeast England, they have also designed gardens for private clients as far afield as France, Spain and California.
It began as Wild Acres, but that wasn’t going to rank us high enough in the directories, so we switched it round
The pair were encouraged in their fledgling careers by fellow Sussex-based garden designer John Brookes, legendary author of Room Outside, whom they met in his garden at Denmans. Another influence was the American landscape architect Thomas D Church, who wrote Gardens Are For People and pioneered the concept of the outdoor room. The book Bold Romantic Gardens, by Wolfgang Oehme and James Van Sweden, was also hugely inspirational on creating larger gardens using grasses and perennials.
In 1991, a recession hit, and the pair turned to teaching to supplement their incomes. By now, there was an increasing appetite for garden design courses, and they both taught at the newly created Oxford College of Garden Design and the Inchbald School of Design. Teaching helped them to crystallise their own ideas about design stemming from a sense of place and grounding a garden in its location.“Design process was our subject, helping students to think through sketching, and engaging with the idea that there is no such thing as a blank canvas, that gardens are not imposed on a site but evolve from it,” says Debbie.
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A chance meeting with an old school friend of Debbie’s who was writing for the business section of The Times in 1995 led to a profile in the newspaper, which Debbie says was a “real springboard” in attracting new clients.
Their process is to visit a garden together in the first instance, then one of them will take the lead on the project, with the other offering a critical eye. They start designing by hand using trace overlays, and the evolved design is then digitised, verified by 3D modelling, further refined and only then presented to the client. The underlying framework is essential, projecting lines from the house, making sure that paths join at 90-degree angles and ensuring curves are geometrically formed, although once the design has been softened with planting, it might not look that way. “Nothing is accidental. Every design decision is made for a reason, and our key words are timeless and enduring,” says Debbie. “A garden, especially a country garden, should not shout ‘design’,” adds Ian. “What makes a garden successful is atmosphere.”
A garden should not shout ‘design’. What makes a garden successful is atmosphere
They draw inspiration from Japanese gardens and the Arts and Crafts movement, using materials that are of their place and in the right proportion to the planting. A favourite garden is the one created at Iford Manor in Wiltshire by Harold Peto, the Edwardian landscape architect and contemporary of Gertrude Jekyll and William Robinson.
Appropriately, I meet the duo at Sissinghurst Castle Garden in Kent, where they are spending a few days in the Priest’s House, right in the middle of the iconic garden created by Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicolson. From the windows of the snug where we sit for our interview, we can see the revived Delos garden created with Dan Pearson.
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During Covid lockdowns, Debbie and Ian finally had the opportunity to design the garden around their studio in Nuthurst, which was recently featured on BBC Gardeners’ World and which Debbie often posts about on social media. After nearly four decades in the business, the Acres Wild duo are now being more selective about the gardens they take on, and hope to spend more time evolving those they have already created. Ian sometimes looks up the gardens on Google Maps. “You’ve changed a piece of the world,” he says, “which is very humbling.”
USEFUL INFORMATION
Acres Wild, 1 Helm Cottages, Nuthurst, Horsham, West Sussex RH13 6RG. Tel 01403 891084, acreswild.co.uk
With special thanks to Caspar Weston in whose garden, designed by Acres Wild, the portrait was taken
