About Flora
Background
I grew up in rural Cambridgeshire (once Huntingdonshire) with lots of sky, large prairie-sized fields and the very gentlest of hills. I have a Fine Art degree from UWE, Bristol, graduating in 1993 in printmaking and painting.
After graduating, I became an illustrator and graphic designer for an innovative new company called Limbs & Things, making sophisticated medical training models; I produced their user guides and catalogues.
I’d been at a crossroads about Fine Art or Landscape Architecture as as a degree path and Fine Art had won. But the landscape design yearning came back and in 2000 I decided to train as a Garden Designer at the Oxford College of Garden Design, going on to set up Flora Design in 2001. Some things are just meant to be! I loved Bristol and lived there for 26 years before moving back to green countryside where I feel most myself.


Influences
Lots of experiences shape and also inspire us. Looking back, I can see that the annual family holidays to beautiful Wester Ross in the north-west of Scotland and Inverewe Garden (owned by the National Trust for Scotland) started my journey in design.
The surrounding landscape is spectacular. I was lucky enough enough to visit the garden regularly throughout my childhood.
It was a really exciting place with its jungly feel, winding paths, rocks for clambering on and brilliant hiding places amongst the bamboo clumps and underneath huge gunnera leaves. I loved playing in there and knew it back to front.
Images (top): Me looking down on the walled garden in 2000. Above left: My 4 year old daughter enjoying a Gunnera leaf 2013. Bottom: Eucalyptus gunnii.
The garden is in a beautiful spot beside Loch Ewe and has a wonderful collection of plants and trees; remarkable given that it shares the same latitude as St Petersburg! But it’s climate is tempered by the gulf stream.
The creation of Inverewe, from a barren peat headland to a lush paradise is in itself inspiring. The shelter belt of trees was the key to protect the garden from the wind. Today’s changing weather patterns and stronger storms pose great challenges for many coastal gardens, compromising their protective shelter belts.
The familiarity of Inverewe left me with memories and feelings that made me want to to recreate that same response, create spaces that fired up all the senses and excitement as I’d felt when playing in that incredible garden.
Sometimes it’s the smallest events that set thoughts in motion. When I was around 8 or 9, we were learning about rainforests at primary school. I was wildly excited when our teacher said we would create a rainforest in our classroom.

My expectations were high; my imagination went into overdrive at the anticipation of this transformation, the ceilings would be a lush green canopy and we’d be surrounded by huge leaves.
In reality, my teacher could only wield so much magic and in place of a tropical landscape there were her two pot plants from home; a swiss cheese and a rubber tree (the staple houseplants of the 1970s) and several big green paper leaves stapled to the ceiling
It was very underwhelming. Also she had to tell a classmate off for cutting her tiny rubber plant and trying to harvest the latex. But this project ignited a spark within me; I’d had a vision and thought how exciting it could be to recreate the feel of something. That feeling never left me, even if I didn’t get to make a jungle that time and that it’s always important to manage expectations.
Now

My own family moved from Bristol in 2016 to Garway Hill, a beautiful spot on the Herefordshire and Welsh border; We are surrounded by sheep, incredible views and amazing wildflowers. It’s also very weathery and we are officially the ‘higher ground’ on Met Office forecasts. We look east across the whole county and get a whole weatherscape moving in front of us. If we’re not in fog (quite often) we may be above it, looking across at wonderful hill top cloud islands. I can often be seen in my wellies happily stomping up and down our very steep and untamed garden which is always work in progress and is very much my retreat.
January 2024