Tom Stuart-Smith: Drawn from the Land

The first major overview of the UK's leading garden designer, Tom Stuart-Smith

'The garden can be a place where the sense of otherness, of nature and of place is so strong that we have a powerful awareness of being, not masters of all we survey, but players in a greater drama … What I am doing as a designer is setting a process in motion, as it were pushing a boat out into the water' Tom Stuart-Smith

Landscape architect and garden designer Tom Stuart-Smith began his own practice in London in 1998. Known for deftly combining naturalism with modernity, and built forms with romantic planting, Stuart-Smith has designed gardens, parks and landscapes in Europe, India, Morocco, the United States and the Caribbean. With clients such as the Royal Horticultural Society, the Royal Academy of Arts and Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, he has established himself as one of the UK’s leading landscape designers, with an international reputation for making gardens that respond to their wider landscape setting.

Featuring twenty-four of Stuart-Smith’s projects from around the world, Tom Stuart-Smith: Drawn from the Land is the first major overview of his career, with a critical introduction and essays by leading garden writer Tim Richardson. Two essays by the designer himself reveal his influences and methods, his thoughts about gardens and gardening, and how he approaches his projects. Drawing is an important part of Stuart-Smith’s work, and each garden is illustrated with an overview drawing as well as spectacular commissioned photography. Descriptive texts place each project in context and explain how the features and planting come together to create rich and multi-layered landscapes. An illustrated chronology of Stuart-Smith’s works to date completes this survey.

Offering unique insights into landscape design and planting, this book will provide inspiration and ideas for garden-lovers and professionals, opening up imaginative possibilities for designing spaces from the smallest to the grandest.

About the Authors:

Tom Stuart-Smith is an English landscape architect, gardener and writer. He is a member of the Society of Garden Designers and the Landscape Institute. He has written about landscape design and gardening for the Financial Times, Guardian and Daily Telegraph. Tim Richardson is an internationally respected landscape critic, former editor at Wallpaper*, gardens editor at Country Life and founding editor of New Eden magazine. His previous books include Avant Gardeners and The Arcadian Friends.