The garden polymath on the pleasures of passing on knowledge, the rewards of close observation and the circuitous route towards grounding her itchy feet. Words Jodie Jones, Portrait John Campbell
For someone whose life is built around the creation of beautiful gardens, Annie Guilfoyle has remarkably itchy feet. She teaches several prestigious garden design courses in this country, including at West Dean and Great Dixter, but also lectures as far afield as Pennsylvania and Poland.
She is an obsessive Italophile and travels there annually for the Bergamo landscape festival (she’s on the selection committee), to run workshops, and at any other opportunity she gets. She designs gardens up and down the country, and the Garden Masterclass events she runs with garden writer Noel Kingsbury only add to her mileage.
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“I have always loved to travel, to go to new places and meet interesting people,” she says. “I grew up on Exmoor in the middle of nowhere, which was very beautiful but isolated. When you start life somewhere like that, you know that you will have to get out and make an effort.”
“Once I started studying horticulture, I knew I had found my people, my world.”
As a child she treated school as a social club, and all her reports said that she would do well if only she would stop talking so much. Instead, she left before sixth form, and trained as a riding instructor. “Horses were my passion at that stage, even though I had to walk two miles just to ride one. I dreamed of competing at the Badminton Horse Trials, but in my heart I knew it was never going to happen, so after a couple of years I decided to get out and see the world instead.”
Although she had never previously travelled further than France on a school trip, she headed off to Canada to work as a nanny. “It was great. I stayed for a couple of years, but I was curious to see Europe so eventually I went to Italy. The minute I got there I fell in love with everything – the people, the language, the landscape, and the way they can argue for hours about the best way to make a particular kind of risotto.”
“My life is a crazy smorgasbord, but what would I give up? I love it all.”
Her passion for Italy has never diminished but, after working abroad for more than a decade, she eventually decided it was time to come home and get a ‘proper’ job. There followed London-based stints in backstage theatre and publishing. “But at a certain point in life, your hormones turn to horticulture. One day I realised that the life I was living wasn’t enough, so I signed up to study horticulture part-time at Capel Manor College.
“My father was a great gardener, so I guess it was always there inside me. I had filled the lightwell outside my London flat with planters made out of old wooden wine crates and ended up winning the Westminster in Bloom Best Basement Garden Award. Once I started studying horticulture, I knew I had found my people, my world.”
When Middlesex University launched the first Garden Design degree in Europe, Annie gave up her publishing job and threw herself into full-time study. Suddenly the girl who couldn’t settle at school was an academic success – in just her first year on the course she won a competition to design a garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show – and straight after graduation she re-joined the university as a lecturer.
“I discovered that I love teaching. I get such pleasure out of passing on knowledge, seeing my students develop, then helping to place them in good positions.” And her students love her back. Many of them have gone on to build award-winning careers based on her unique blend of sound business advice, solid hard work and enthusiastically creative stimulation. “I tell them all to sign up for a life-drawing class. They think I’m mad, but it teaches you to observe closely, and that’s the most important skill for a garden designer.”
She worked as director of garden design at KLC School of Design for 18 years and, when she finally left, established Garden Masterclass with Noel Kingsbury.
“In fact, that started because of Gardens Illustrated. Juliet Roberts, who was editor at the time, asked
us to curate some live events for the magazine and we decided to roll out the concept around the country, so we could offer learning days and webinars to the widest possible range of people.”
Even now, at an age when many might think about retiring, she gets an evangelical gleam in her eyes as she talks about sharing her knowledge, introducing people, celebrating design and exploring new ideas. “My life is a crazy smorgasbord, but what would I give up? I love it all.”
If anything, she continues to take on even more activities – Italian lessons to refine her grasp of the grammar, art courses at West Dean, film making (her biopic on Keith Wiley of Wildside garden was shortlisted for a Garden Media Guild Award), and support for the Tuppenny Barn charity, near her home in West Sussex, which educates and inspires communities to learn about organic food. She even finds time to ride occasionally.
“Studying drawing and painting taught me to enjoy the process and not fixate on the end result,” she says. “We put so much stress on ourselves to create a finished product, when it is actually the journey that is important. There is a big world out there, and I don’t want to miss any of it.”
Find out more about Garden Masterclass at gardenmasterclass.org