Sarah Price: Designer in blooms

With gardening fever griping London, Thomas Luscombe meets a young star of the next generation of garden designers

Above: Sarah Price, Herne Hill resident and professional gardener

Herne Hill garden designer Sarah Price is taking the horticultural world by storm. Just 27 years old, she has won a gold at the Hampton Court Flower Show and has already designed two gardens for the Chelsea Flower Show.

Sarah grew up in Esher and spent many days as a child on her father’s allotment, a great place to play and escape the city life. Her grandmother, an avid gardener who grew vegetables and fruits, was also an inspiration. After graduating from fine art at Nottingham Trent University and studying residential landscape architecture at the Oxford School of Garden Design, she spent a spell working on the renovation of the gardens at Hampton Court Palace.

Today Sarah’s work takes her all over London and the UK. Together with Wynniatt-Husey Clarke, a company she’s been with for over four years, she was asked by QVC to design and exhibit a garden for this year’s Chelsea Flower Show.

Battersea-based company QVC set the task of designing a garden that blends a traditional rural look with contemporary twists, while show organisers the Royal Horticultural Society encouraged designers to use sustainable and biodegradable products that would cause little harm to the environment. "Show gardens in the past were too wasteful in their nature," Sarah explains. "Designers are now encouraged to put a green message across."

The QVC garden encouraged visitors "to embrace a looser, naturalistic style," she says, "and to not be afraid of using bedding and natural plants – which have great seed heads and therefore attract wildlife – and also to not have high, maintained borders to allow natural flow in and out".

She’s against a rigid, contrived look and advocates embracing whatever your environment has to offer. "There are many garden designers in London because of the lack of space, and gardens are becoming much more valued because they have become an extra space for Londoners to escape too," she observes "I hope that gardens in London move away from a somewhat static feel to them, as though they are an inside space – so pristine."

She’s had a lot of practice in planning gardens in the capital, and offers some advice. "With small spaces people are too preoccupied with blocking out the outside and view; it’s better to create a focus within the space so that you are absorbed within the garden. Rather than shutter out the sun and the surrounding area, embrace the sun and the views of the landscape that surround you no matter how urban," she suggests. "Have some restraint with regards to the range of flowers you use within the small space so that it doesn’t clash – just go for a simple theme and limit the colour to materials and plants."

It’s certainly a great time to be in professional gardening, and no doubt her work will continue to grow. "Due to London’s affluent arts and design scene with regards to interiors and architecture and graphics, the importance of design has had a knock-on effect in personal garden design." And as for her own goals for the future, Sarah plans to carry on developing not only her green fingers but her green credentials too. Her aims? "To work in an even more sustainable fashion using and experimenting with green building solutions, to plant ecologically, and to plant more trees."