We've completely revised and updated our list of the finest of them all.
More from the Country Life Top 100:
- Best architects in Britain
- Best interior designers in Britain
- Best country house specialists in Britain
Angela Collins Garden Design
Angela ‘Angel’ Collins specialises in creating delightful gardens with romantic planting combined with crisp architectural lines and elegant symmetry. Projects are historic country-house concentrated and currently include the restoration of an Arts-and-Crafts garden in Oxfordshire, ongoing work at Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire, and Bruern Abbey, Oxfordshire, as well as a garden focused on biodiversity surrounding a new eco house in Northamptonshire.
07876 592440; www.angelacollins.co.uk
Angus Thompson
Oxfordshire-based Angus Thompson describes his approach to garden design as ‘quietly contemporary’. Expect an elegant simplicity and deep understanding of plants, creating calm and personalised landscapes that subtly unify with the architecture of the houses they surround, as evidenced in the geometrically satisfying contemporary garden with loose natural planting at a cart-house conversion in Northamptonshire (‘Shaping the view’, February 19). He is known for a meticulous approach and reflective water, including pools and rills.
Mr Thompson founded his practice in 2004, counts a Gold medal at RHS Chelsea among his awards and continues to offer a personal service to UK-wide clients, focusing on Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and London. He is also currently working on creating a wildlife-friendly oasis of Nature at a town-sized property in Cambridge. ‘My role is to marry practical considerations with elegant solutions,’ he says. ‘It is the relationship between proportion, plants and movement through the garden that makes it purr.’
01865 552446; www.angusthompsondesign.com
Arabella Lennox-Boyd
The distinguished designer of some of the country’s most beautiful private gardens combines 50 years of experience with a deep knowledge of planting. Her statements are big, but never brash or harsh, and her gardens are known for featuring a strong sense of place, as evidenced in her books, such as Gardens In My Life (Bloomsbury), and at her own home, Gresgarth Hall in Lancashire (‘All fired up’, October 26, 2022).
020-7931 9995; www.arabellalennoxboyd.com
Balston Agius
Balston Agius is run by Marie-Louise Agius with Michael Balston as consultant. They are admired for their expertise in working in harmony with the surroundings on country estates and for large-scale landscape remodelling. As the great-granddaughter of Lionel de Rothschild, creator of the 200-acre Exbury Gardens in Hampshire, Miss Agius is also renowned for her work on the estate, including the contemporary Centenary Garden.
01380 848181; www.balstonagius.co.uk
Butter Wakefield
Known for magical designs brimming with plants, Butter Wakefield heads a small multi-award-winning studio in west London, taking on projects across the capital and the South. Expert at maximising the potential of urban gardens, using reclaimed materials and considering sustainability at every turn, she launched her ‘Small Garden Design’ course with Create Academy last autumn.
07973 516149; www.butterwakefield.co.uk
Cameron
With a reputation for delivering atmospheric gardens with a palpable sense of place, Alasdair Cameron founded his now mid-size practice in 1992. As a passionate plantsman, he creates individual, dynamic designs which respond to specific requirements and environments, including gardens in the capital (‘Light work’, February 12), multi-layered country estates across the UK and jewel-like courtyard spaces for hotels.
020-8969 3399; www.camerongardens.co.uk
A bucolic garden conceived by Cameron, which is famous for atmospheric designs with a carefully considered sense of place.
Dan Pearson Studio
Dan Pearson is celebrated for his work as a landscape designer, horticulturalist and writer. He is known for the naturalistic feel of his planting using perennial plants, grasses and native trees, underpinned by a deep understanding of horticulture. The award-winning studio works internationally, including in the US and Japan, and counts projects at Sissinghurst Castle Garden in Kent, Lowther Castle & Gardens in Cumbria and the Garden Museum in London SE1 in its portfolio. It is also working on a new masterplan and sculpture park for Good-wood’s Art Foundation in West Sussex and a scheme for the Beth Chatto Gardens and Nursery in Essex.
020-7928 3800; www.danpearsonstudio.com
Emily Erlam Studio
Headed by television producer-turned-landscape designer Emily Erlam, this London-based studio was founded in 2010, earning a reputation for designs that are in harmony with their surroundings, be it a Georgian townhouse, a rooftop in the city or a large country estate. ‘I like to create plant-led designs that relate to their locality, often creating structure using plants and trees, rather than leaning too heavily on hard landscaping.’
An elegant landscape design by former television producer Emily Erlam
Her ability to create gardens with a relaxed, natural style ensures a wide variety of projects, often presented with beautiful hand drawings. Designs include the garden at Emmetts Mill in Surrey, which cleverly blends a contemporary clean-lined terrace of pale sandstone, interspersed with colourful beds of perennials, with wilder planting beside the mill stream.
The studio has also worked at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire and is currently creating a large family garden with natural swimming pond at a property in Hampstead, London NW3. Commercial projects include working with Heatherwick Studio on a science park in Surrey, featuring a medicinal garden, and a culinary garden at Hambledon Vineyard in Hampshire.
07973 419097; www.erlamstudio.com
Harris Bugg Studio
Charlotte Harris and Hugo Bugg run an award-winning practice known for intelligent and imaginative transformations of gardens at country estates, often in areas requiring careful conservation considerations, such as a 100-acre estate in the Chilterns with a landscape dating back to Tudor times (‘Cool, calm and collected’, August 9, 2023). The studio is currently at work on a major restoration project for the Barbican Conservatory, London EC2, with its dramatic Brutalist structure and abundant planting.
01392 927172; www.harrisbugg.com
I & J Bannerman
Isabel and Julian Bannerman have been designing gardens and garden buildings together since 1983, earning a reputation for theatrical and romantic designs. They have designed gardens at Highgrove in Gloucestershire and were granted a Royal Warrant of Appointment to The King in May 2024. Other projects include the imaginatively designed garden at Seend Manor in Wiltshire (‘The world on the doorstep’, October 2, 2024), a new landscape and walled gardens around a house in Oxfordshire and gardens for Sting and Trudie Styler in Wiltshire and Italy.
James Alexander-Sinclair
Based in Oxfordshire, James Alexander-Sinclair is a leading figure in the world of garden design, blending charisma with talent and deep knowledge. He is an RHS vice-president, RHS Gardens judge, television presenter, writer, lecturer and head of his own garden-design practice specialising in medium to large country gardens, including Coates Barn in the Cotswolds, which showcases his creative approach (‘Where the north wind doth blow’, September 18, 2024).
07515 336356; www.jamesalexandersinclair.com
Jane Brown
Describing her approach as a blend of the traditional and modern to create timeless gardens, Jane Brown works carefully to create bespoke designs, many of which are country gardens in historical settings. Known for naturalistic and free-flowing planting, considered structures and generous hard land-scaping, Miss Brown works across London and the South-East. Current projects include a masterplan for the gardens and grounds of a listed farmhouse in west Berkshire, including a lake with parkland planting, terraces, orchard and walled vegetable garden.
07894 427114; www.janebrown.co.uk
Jinny Blom Studio
Accomplished landscape designer, plantswoman and author Jinny Blom is known for her artistic approach to garden design, in styles that can be formal or informal, but which are always appropriate to the site and always magical. Her most recent book, What Makes a Garden (Quarto), offers a revealing insight into her passion for design, winning the Garden Media Guild Gardening Book of the Year award 2024.
020-3950 2899; www.jinnyblom.com
Jo Thompson Landscape & Garden Design
Designer, writer and speaker Jo Thompson is admired for her romantic designs and painterly planting, undertaking public and private gardens including a quiet haven created for author Justine Picardie in Norfolk (‘Planting stories’, August 3, 2022). Miss Thompson’s latest book, The New Romantic Garden (Rizzoli), has just been published, and she will return to RHS Chelsea this year with a garden for The Glasshouse, a social enterprise that provides second chances through horticulture.
020-7127 8438; www.jothompson-garden-design.co.uk
Kim Wilkie
Strategic and conceptual landscape architect Kim Wilkie is admired for sculpting the land, creating calm, green geometric patterns on a large scale, often in historic settings, including Orpheus, the inverted pyramid at Boughton, Northamptonshire, a sculpture garden at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London SE21, and a long-term masterplan for Kew at Wakehurst Place in West Sussex.
07768 874089; www.kimwilkie.com
Lloyd Brunt Outdoor Design
Graham Lloyd-Brunt is well known for his timeless designs, each of which is given a modern twist to make it suitable for today’s lifestyles, as evidenced at Pembury Hall in Kent (‘New for old’, February 28, 2024). He is expert at making sense of awkward sites, too, and creating gardens that seem as if they have always been there.
Lutyens & FitzGerald Landscape Design
Garden designer Catherine FitzGerald and landscape architect Mark Lutyens head a small practice, Lutyens & FitzGerald, specialising in designing new gardens and restoring historic ones, in Britain and Ireland. Miss FitzGerald has sensitively transformed the gardens at her family home, Glin Castle, Co Limerick, Ireland (‘Presiding spirits’, August 7, 2024). Other projects include a new garden with an Arts-and-Crafts feel at a restored 18th-century house in the Derbyshire Dales and softening the terrace of a fine Oxfordshire mansion, by adding a naturalistic gravel garden and restoring the Capability Brown parkland beyond.
07785 330302; https://lutyensfitzgerald.com
Marian Boswall Landscape Architects
Leading landscape architect and plantswoman Marian Boswall heads a Kent-based practice with a satellite office in London, working with a focus on regeneration, using local craftspeople and planting with Nature. She is known for work on historic gardens, as well as large-scale regenerative landscapes, currently including the 60-mile-long Chalk to Coast Nature-recovery project in Kent in collaboration with local farmers and landowners. Her new book, The Kindest Garden (Frances Lincoln), is published on April 10.
020-7305 7153; www.marianboswall.com
Marian Boswell took a restrained approach to the aromatic planting of this converted Cotswold chapel, now a private house
Mazzullo + Russell Landscape Design
Emma Mazzullo and Libby Russell head a studio that undertakes a wide variety of projects, including large estates, across the UK, Channel Islands and abroad. Projects are beautifully paced and sensitive to their settings with romantic planting, including a new garden, made to feel mature, at a new-build house in the Home Counties (‘Instant gratification’, July 27, 2022), as well as large country gardens in Somerset and Jersey and a contemporary amphitheatre garden in central London.
020-7931 9996; www.mazzullorussell.com
Miria Harris
With an MA in contemporary art and curation, London-based designer Miria Harris says she was drawn to landscape design by the ‘slippage between architecture and the natural world’.
She is known for elegant, artistic gardens, featuring a painterly sense of colour, made with low environmental-impact choices and carefully sourced materials that blend well into the overall scheme.
A scheme conceived by London-based Miria Harris for a garden originally designed by Decimus Burton in Kent
Her boutique studio was founded about a decade ago and the portfolio of projects includes a dramatic and highly successful reinvention of the garden of a Decimus Burton villa in Kent (‘The odd couple’, July 24, 2024); current gardens include ones in Suffolk, Cornwall, Norway and Jersey, as well as London.
After suffering a stroke at the age of 44, Mrs Harris used her experience to design the Stroke Association Garden for Recovery at RHS Chelsea last year, considered to be one of the most calming spaces at the show. ‘I wanted it to be as close as possible to the experience of a real garden, within the context of a temporary exhibition space,’ she explains. ‘One of my greatest delights was how alive with Nature it became, with visits from bees, butterflies, hoverflies and even a duck.’
07887 993197; www.miriaharris.com
Pip Morrison Landscape Designs
Widely admired for his sensitive, thoughtful approach to design and expertise in the development of historic gardens, Pip Morrison has been working on restoring those at Auckland Castle, Co Durham, for the past decade; they are due to open this spring. Other recent projects include the Kensington Palace Sunken Garden, a wild garden at the Oxford Maggie’s Cancer Care Centre and a private garden in the South of France. His reinterpretation of the 18th-century garden at Chettle House in Dorset was featured in Country Life.
07817 736360; pip@pipmorrison.co.uk
Robert Myers Associates
Specialising in contemporary gardens set in historic landscapes, Robert Myers’s Worcestershire-based practice undertakes both public and private projects across the UK. A seven-time RHS Chelsea Gold-medal winner, the practice is currently working on landscape designs for Trinity College, Cambridge, and the Duke of York Square, London SW3. Recent projects also include a large estate in Hampshire, a roof terrace in Soho, London W1, and a church precinct in Washington State, US. A bold new flower garden for a house in Cambridgeshire was featured in Country Life (July 26, 2023).
01223 351400; www.robertmyers-associates.co.uk
Rupert Golby
Known for classic English gardens, Rupert Golby brings an intelligent eye to plant-rich designs using a great variety of materials. Often, he stays with his projects, developing them as they evolve over the decades. Now, he is looking after ongoing work at Nevill Holt in Leicestershire, site of an annual opera festival, as well as Ferne Park in Dorset and the private gardens at Daylesford House in Gloucestershire. He is also creating an inspirational one-acre garden for an 18th-century house in London, filled with fine specimens of myrtle (Myrtus), Indian bean trees (Catalpa) and tulip trees (Liriodendron).
07785 228384
Studio Bristow
Dan Bristow is known for his work in harmony with the landscape and for incorporating environmental awareness into his designs. He set up his Snowdonia-based practice, Studio Bristow, in 2008, and won a Gold medal and Best All About Plants Garden prize at RHS Chelsea last year for the Size of Wales garden, which featured more than 300 different plant species. ‘I want to encourage everyone to make planting in their own gardens more diverse, in order to benefit wildlife,’ he explains.
Known as ‘Propagating Dan’, he is a widely travelled plant collector with extensive knowledge of using unusual species to suit specific locations, which may be why he is currently working on the design of a low-nutrient, high-exposure garden on the wind-swept rooftop of a multi-storey car park in St Austell, Cornwall. Mr Bristow is equally at home creating private gardens that celebrate his bold and irreverent approach, always designed to suit the surrounding context. ‘We create landscapes that are human-focused and eco-conscious,’ he says.
Tania Compton
Tania Compton’s artistic eye makes her a sought-after designer in the UK and abroad. Her work demonstrates a passion for abundantly exuberant planting and expertise in creating a fine balance between art and Nature, always with a subtle element of surprise. Her own garden at Spilsbury, near Cranborne Chase in Wiltshire, was featured in Countrhy Life (October 28, 2020).
Todd Longstaffe-Gowan
Renowned for creating historically informed, inventive and exciting gardens, Todd Longstaffe-Gowan is gardens adviser to Historic Royal Palaces, a lecturer and author. His latest book, Lost Gardens of London (Modern Art Press), was published in October last year and featured in Country Life (‘Echoes of another age’, October 30, 2024). His practice employs rigorous research into a place, its people and its context to represent the special qualities of a landscape.
Current work includes the master-planning of a major brain-health research and innovation campus in Headington, Oxford, in collaboration with Eric Parry Architects, as well as a large estate on Long Island, New York, US, and a new garden in the Bahamas.
020-3327 3780; www.tlg-landscape.co.uk
Tom Stuart-Smith Studio
The universally acclaimed Tom Stuart-Smith is the winner of nine Gold medals at RHS Chelsea and a leading light in landscape design, thanks to his ability to bring a modern eye and unexpected elements to schemes that focus on naturalistic planting.
Projects include the reinvention of the old walled garden at Knepp Castle in West Sussex (‘Doing things differently’, June 26, 2024), ongoing work at Chatsworth in Derbyshire and a garden for Tate Britain in collaboration with the RHS. In 2024, he was named a Royal Designer for Industry by the Royal Society of Arts. He and his psychiatrist wife, Sue, are the forces behind the not-for-profit Serge Hill Project for Gardening, Creativity and Health in Hertfordshire.
020-7253 2100; www.tomstuartsmith.co.uk
Xa Tollemache
With traditional gardens her speciality, Lady Tollemache is an expert at transforming neglected landscapes, from large estates to small gardens in town and country. Meandering paths through clumps of lavender and roses, formal features such as obelisks and statues and dream ponds surrounded by lush planting are the hallmarks of her style, redolent of the garden she designed for her ancestral home, Helmingham Hall in Suffolk. Currently working on designs for gardens in Northumberland, Shropshire and Suffolk, Lady Tollemache also offers a bespoke collection of garden furniture.
01473 890799; www.xa-tollemache.co.uk
Country Life Top 100 picture credits: Jack Badworth; Jo Thompson; Yiangou; Max Rolle; Research by Amelia Thorpe; Adrian Lambert; Jason Ingran; Tom Mannion 2018 Andy Manshalt Claire Takach Photography Simon Brown Chris Walteld Photography, Clive Rose, Oukar Proctor; Kally Marshall, Marry Crowder, Paul Manuey; Helen Cathcart; Martin Monelt Marianne Majerus Garden Images; Eva Nemeth/Country Life Picture Library Future Pie; Simon Uptor; Harlet Chalis; Richard Bloom, Rachel Warne: Nick Smith, Jake Easthan;
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A Buckinghamshire mansion built for the speech therapist who set Churchill on his path to greatnessPenny Churchill takes a look at Rignalls, a classic Arts-and-Crafts home that looks like it's stepped out of the pages of an EM Forster novel.
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Constance Spry, Harry Styles and rescue dogs: Florist and founder of the Wild at Heart Foundation Nikki Tibbles’s consuming passionsNikki Tibbles reveals the possession she would never sell and who would play her in a film.
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The best rhododendron and azalea gardens in BritainIt's the time of year when rhododendrons, azaleas, magnolias and many more spring favourites are starting to light up the gardens of the nation. Here are the best places to go to enjoy them at their finest.
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Great Comp: The blissful garden flooded with rhododendrons and azaleas that's just beyond the M25Each spring, Great Comp Garden — just outside the M25, near Sevenoaks — erupts into bloom, with swathes of magnolias, azaleas and rhododendrons. Charles Quest-Ritson looks at what has become one of the finest gardens to visit in Kent.
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'I'm the expert who wrote the RHS's guide to roses — here's why pruning them right now is almost certainly a terrible mistake'More roses die from over-pruning than any other cause so what’s the reasoning underpinning this horticultural habit? Charles Quest-Ritson, the garden expert who wrote the RHS Encyclopedia of Roses, takes a closer look.
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Forsythia: The spring flower that's a ray of sunshine — and a foolproof option for novice gardenersForsythia are often sniffed at for being too brassy, but there is a lot more going for them, says Charles Quest-Ritson, although don’t plant them next to clashing pink-flowering currants.
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John Morley: A brush with the artist who changed the world of snowdropsTilly Ware meets the artist and galanthophile John Morley in his Suffolk garden, home to the oldest snowdrop nursery in the country.
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Alan Titchmarsh: I went a bit mad ordering bulbs — and I'm not even a little bit sorry I didOur columnist's splurge in the autumn is now paying off with spectacular irises across his garden.
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Dawn Chorus: How to travel around the world in 19 flowers and the Mini Moke that took St Moritz by stormWhat do Charles Dickens, Henry VIII and Ellen Willmott all have in common? They all appear in a new book chronicling 19 flowers and the people responsible for bringing them to the UK. Find out how to get your hands on it, plus, we reveal why a rare Beach Boys-inspired Mini Moke turned up in a Swiss ski resort and a few of India Knight’s favourite things.
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How to make a gloomy city garden into a haven of colour and natureTiffany Daneff discovers how to transform a typically dark London back garden into a light-filled green haven that is always in use. Photographs by Clive Nichols.
