An Interview with Anthea Guthrie

With a special interest in native planting and historical gardens, Anthea Guthrie finds lots of inspiration for her award-winning designs. In this interview for Reckless she talks to Sandy Felton about her love of historical gardens and her plans for 2008.

For me, one of the highlights of Hampton Court 2007, was Anthea Guthrie’s delightful Torres Tapas Garden. Here amid the leaden skies of London was a piece of pure sunshine, a magical garden full of interest and fun – perfectly encapsulating the feel of a lovely Spanish vineyard.

With eight RHS medals behind her since 2005, including three Gold, Anthea is no novice to the pressure of designing prestigious show gardens. In 2006 Anthea’s ‘The Mayflower Garden’ - a joint project with the American Museum - won Gold at both BBC Gardener’s World and RHS Hampton Court as well as Most Creative Garden in both shows.

Of all the gardens she has designed for RHS Shows, she admits it is difficult to pick a favourite as she loved them all: “The Ambrosial Forest, which got me a gold in Cardiff and Best Small Garden at Gardener’s World Live, was a really sweet garden which was a pleasure to build and I have since used as a design in private client’s gardens, so I know it was practical as well as beautiful. The Mayflower was an arresting project because of the history attached to it. In the end I felt I’d met the pilgrims in person.”

Anthea admits that she can’t remember a time when she didn’t love gardening but it was when she moved to her present house 11 years ago and found that she had half an acre of field to play with that the bug really took hold.

“I had to really think about the design”, she explains. “This was the first time I had to plan from scratch. My previous gardens were already in existence but this one was a blank canvas. Frankly, I felt like God!”

So what excites her most about designing? “Where do I start? The challenge of starting from the beginning with a different project each time, the thrill of making a planting plan work, the knowledge that a maiden tree will be there for future generations because I put it there, infecting the client with my love of it all, and the learning, learning, learning that never stops.”

Personally, it always fascinates me as to what runs through the mind of a designer when they first accept a commission for a garden. In Anthea’s case she admits that it is which bit of garden they sit in: “Which bit do they look at from the house, what is the soil like, what is the aspect,” she says. “Is it on a slope, how much time does the client want to spend maintaining it, what is the access like (try putting in/taking out gardens from the back to the skip in the street through a kitchen and sitting room in a terraced house!) When can I start?”

She loves sweet peas, roses and wild flowers and adores a spring hedge in full flight especially when on a hedge bank covered in wild strawberries, violets, primroses and scabious: “I love creeping thyme in flower flowing over rocks, with its rich purple and dark green colour scheme. I like simple plants which are not over bred, I love fruit trees in blossom, so full of promise, they make you glad to be alive.”

I ask the usual question about a favourite designer and receive the surprising answer of “Mother Nature of course! The symmetry, colour and form you find if you look closely at a leaf, or a flower, or even a petal - you learn such a lot. I like Dan Pearson very much; he has a loose, relaxed style and is prepared to discuss planting he has come to regret. I find that encouraging as so much gardening is trial and error, and you should be excited by new ideas, not frightened in case something doesn’t work out. I would kill to have met John Tradescant, or his son.”

She has a passionate interest in historical gardens and likes to relate to real people in history. So where better to do that than to understand what people grew and why? Anthea explains: “For example, the drops of water that accumulate on Alchemilla mollis are mercurial and were believed to have magical, aphrodisiacal properties and the plants were taken (by the so-called Puritans, ho ho) to the New World. To be planting the same varieties of plants that have existed for hundreds, if not thousands of years, is to be hand in hand with other gardeners through the ages.”

Anthea likes the natural organic style and particularly the Arts and Crafts gardens: “I like handmade, high quality structures such as statues, pillars, benches. I particularly dislike the mass produced imported 'traditional' statuary you see at shows because I don't like something that's trying to be what it's not, it never really looks right."

Plans for 2008 include working with Heronsbridge Special School in Bridgend to produce the ‘Slugger Off” garden for RHS Cardiff: “I’m having a great time with the kids and the teachers, and as we are building the garden in the school after the show, the school will benefit long term.” She is also going to be busy on the garden talk circuit and will be guest speaker on a themed cruise in June.

There will also be more radio and TV work this year on top of her also having to maintain and build gardens for her private clients. Not to mention looking after her own heritage fruit garden and orchard where she has just prepared a long border for sweet peas and poppies designed for a “short but sweet season as opposed to the idea of all year interest.” Her only worry is that her chickens don’t get out and scratch it all up.

When not gardening she enjoys riding and looking after her three rescue dogs but admits that she has to spend an inordinate amount of time on damage limitation – one of her dogs recently ate two mobile phones and three party shoes. She also likes to read – usually travel or biography – and in true Recklessgardener fashion she enjoys drinking wine and yacking with neighbours: “We live in a tiny hamlet miles away from anywhere so we have to make our own entertainment.” Sounds good to me.

Finally, I ask her if she has any advice for aspiring designers: “It’s hard to make your living just providing designs – you have to be able to put the garden in too, or at least project manage it. Go on a good course and get an understanding of hard and soft landscaping so you can talk sensibly to your contractors. It’s a big leap from working on your own garden to being responsible for someone else’s. Keep an open mind and never stop learning. Visiting gardens, big or small is a must for the aspiring designer so that you can ask yourself what works and what does not.”

As the show season for 2008 gets underway we wish Anthea well in all her projects. To log onto Anthea’s website go to: www.antheaguthrie.co.uk