The garden polymath on the pleasures of passing on knowledge, the rewards of close observation and the circuitous route towards grounding her itchy feet.\nWords Jodie Jones, Portrait John Campbell <\/p>
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 <\/a>and Great Dixter<\/a>, but also lectures as far afield as Pennsylvania and Poland.<\/p> She is an obsessive Italophile and travels there annually for the Bergamo landscape festival<\/a> (she\u2019s 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 <\/a>only add to her mileage.<\/p> You may also like:<\/strong><\/p> \u201cI have always loved to travel, to go to new places and meet interesting people,\u201d she says. \u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p> “Once I started studying horticulture, I knew I had found my people, my world.”<\/p><\/blockquote> 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. \u201cHorses 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.\u201d<\/p> Although she had never previously travelled further than France on a school trip, she headed off to Canada to work as a nanny. \u201cIt 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 \u2013 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.\u201d<\/p> \u201cMy life is a crazy smorgasbord, but what would I give up? I love it all.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote> 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 \u2018proper\u2019 job. There followed London-based stints in backstage theatre and publishing. \u201cBut at a certain point in life, your hormones turn to horticulture. One day I realised that the life I was living wasn\u2019t enough, so I signed up to study horticulture<\/a> part-time at Capel Manor College.<\/p> \u201cMy 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.\u201d<\/p> 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\u2019t settle at school was an academic success \u2013 in just her first year on the course she won a competition to design a garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show <\/a>\u2013 and straight after graduation she re-joined the university as a lecturer. 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.<\/p> \u201cIn fact, that started because of Gardens Illustrated<\/em>. Juliet Roberts, who was editor at the time, asked If anything, she continues to take on even more activities \u2013 Italian lessons to refine her grasp of the grammar, art courses at West Dean, film making (her biopic on Keith Wiley of Wildside<\/a><\/em> 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.<\/p> \u201cStudying drawing and painting taught me to enjoy the process and not fixate on the end result,\u201d she says. \u201cWe 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\u2019t want to miss any of it.\u201d<\/p>