1two million pounds on a garden and it would be
installed immediately. I was helping Tom with a mix
of large country gardens in the south of England as
well as projects in London. Clients would say,
“Thanks, great garden. Could you make one for my
holiday home?” which may be in Spain or in the
Caribbean. And that’s when Tom gave me more scope
and said, “Well, you can lead the design on that,” as he
had a family and didn’t want to travel as far afield
as the Caribbean. So I got to take much more owner-
ship of the design as well as the running of the project.
I think the other thing to note about working for
Tom is that this was the first time in my life that I
had seen such vast perennial planting schemes. The
garden designs I had been exposed to in New Zealand
were, to boil it down, lawn or a terrace with a bit of
planting around the edge. The planting was kind of
decoration rather than the main event; the primary
focus was the living space. Most people in the suburbs
of Australasia have a bit of a garden, and that’s
primarily lawn and terrace: it’s useable, and then the
planting sort of jollies up the perimeter. However,
some of the gardens in England that we were making
with Tom [involved filling] an entire field with plants
and [carving] out spots for a pool and maybe a terrace,
but the overriding momentum of the garden was the
planting. It completely shifted my perspective on the- A sketch of Le Jardin Secret
garden in Marrakech, Morocco.
The garden was designed by Tom
Stuart-Smith while Andy worked
with the practice as the lead
landscape architect.
Image: Andy Hamilton
role that planting can play in a garden to create
atmosphere.Do you think those sorts of commissions are
behind you now, or do you think that you’ll see
something like that again, maybe back home in
New Zealand?
The first job that I took on when I returned to New
Zealand is quite similar to some of the commissions in
the UK. It’s a large rural property and it has a sort of
parklands-esque quality to it – stands of deciduous
and native trees with a little river running through,
scope for orchards and meadows. The client is a
family friend who knew the work I was doing in the
UK and saw that she could achieve something similar
on their land. Of course the budget is different, the
plant palette’s different, but ostensibly it’s a very
similar commission to that of the projects I was
working on in the first few years with Tom. I’m
excited. The client is a wonderful plantswoman; she’s
very keen to do a lot of perennial plantings.You’ve had commissions all over the world: in
Morocco, India, the Caribbean. How do you go
about familiarizing yourself with those land-
scapes and then formulating a response? What’s it
like working on a job so far away? →INTERVIEW
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AUSTRALIA MAY 2017 57