"Design is everywhere. It is glorious, but exhausting", says Andrew Duff, and it is a statement he lives by. For more than 30 years, he has designed gardens, taught students garden design and travelled the world lecturing on garden design.
You may also like:
- Meet garden designer Will Tomson
- Interview with the deputy director and head of science at Oxford Botanic Garden
- How to design your garden
He has also been on the council of the Society of Garden and Landscape Designers (SGLD) since 2018 and became its chair two years ago, so he doesn't get much time off for good behaviour; but then, he doesn't seem to want it.
Look through his Instagram account and you will see that even there he plays design games, organising images in individual posts so that they join up on the grid to create a bigger picture.
“Most designers are control freaks and perfectionists, but that is not really compatible with gardening,” he says. “We can’t control plants. They control us. So, as garden designers we come at the world from a unique perspective.”
You can’t let fashion dictate plant choices. No plant is intrinsically fashionable or unfashionable. It is all down to how you use it.
That combination of visual imagery and the natural world has fascinated Andrew since childhood. “I grew up in the Gloucestershire countryside, with a rambling great garden and parents who home schooled me and then let me teach myself by experiment and exploration. I can lay my career on that opportunity to be immersed in nature.”
He spent his time making dens and helping his mother to battle brambles. When he was eight years old, he built his parents a pond and they gave him a copy of the John Brookes Garden Design Book, but in adolescence he became fascinated by photography.
“After school I went on to study photography, but early in the course we were asked to choose between focusing on fashion or landscape. I had no interest in fashion, so it was an easy decision. I took pictures of huge fields and would often stick a dead branch in somewhere to make a more interesting composition, so it felt natural to switch to landscape design.”
He graduated from the University of Greenwich after work experience in Ireland, cataloguing the rhododendron and azalea collection at Mount Congreve Gardens. “That was every bit as dull as it sounds so, somehow, I got up the nerve to contact John Brookes. It turned out to be the most important phone call I ever made. He invited me to tea, and became my mentor, my role model and my launchpad into the industry.”
Most designers are control freaks and perfectionists, but that is not really compatible with gardening.
He spent six years working as John’s associate, absorbing his passion for music and the arts along with his genius for design. We started with separate workspaces, but mine was very cold, so one winter’s day, he invited me into his studio. I set up my drawing board beside his and never went back to my chilly office. I can still hear the scratch of his pencil on paper, with Elgar playing in the background.
“John taught me to justify every single line on a plan. There should always be a reason why you have put the path on one axis or ended the meadow a a certain point. Design is not a magical process and it is a even though, when done well, it does produce magic,” Andrew says.
In a way, good design is subjective, but the measure of success is a happy client.
He has fond memories of those times with John, but by the late he has designed gardens, taught students of 1990s, he decided it was time to leave and set up his own studio.
“Instead of being cross, John spoke to all his clients who had been on garden design. He has also been on the working with me, and four of them followed me to my new business, council of the Society of Garden and Landscape with his blessing. It was characteristically generous of him.”
In time, John began inviting Andrew to accompany him on lecture he doesn’t get much time off for good behaviour; but then, he doesn’t tours to the USA, Argentina, Chile and Japan, and introduced him to Jacqueline Duncan, the formidable founder of the Inchbald School of Design.
“I had been teaching garden design at Merrist Wood College in Guildford, to supplement my income and keep me connected with other design professionals, and John had set up the garden school at Inchbald. When he decided to step back from that, he brought me in to meet Jacqueline, and I have worked there ever since.”
These days he is managing director at Inchbald, but still teaches as well. “I try to pass on to my students the sort of inspirational grounding that John gave me. His famous grid system is a great starting point, but you can give a group of students the same garden, client, brief and length of time, and they will all come up with something different. In a way, good design is subjective, but the measure of success is a happy client.”
Like John, Andrew believes that the design process starts with a pencil in your hand, and develops best to a background of music. “I grew up in the house where Elgar composed the Enigma Variations so, like John, I love his music, but my students take turns choosing what we listen to in the school, and the playlist can be pretty eclectic."
He is equally open-minded in his approach to plants. “You can’t let fashion dictate plant choices. No plant is intrinsically fashionable or unfashionable. It is all down to how you use it. I have actually just planted a whole grove of amelanchiers in my own garden, which was slightly annoying because they are such a cliché at the moment, but they really were the best trees for the job.”
He divides his time between London and a chapel in the middle of a graveyard in Wales, where he planted those amelanchiers to anchor the headstones against the expanse of open sky. “Design work is intense; so is teaching and the work we do to build a community through the SGLD. I love it all, but Wales is where I come to recharge with my wife Katie, who is a landscape architect, and our two boys. I cook for my family. I collect art. I collect chairs as well. But above all, I clear brambles, plant trees, and immerse myself in nature.”
Useful information
Find out more about Andrew Duff’s work at andrewduffgardendesign.com