SPARROW GARDEN DESIGN

Designing a garden is in many ways akin to painting a three-dimensional picture, the only difference being that the end result takes longer, sometimes many years longer. The ability to take a blank canvas and visualise a plan and how it will metamorphose over one year, three years and five years is perhaps the most essential tool in any designers' armoury.

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My upbringing in Asia taught me the virtue of patience as well as a deep love of colour and respect for all things living. At an early age I found myself fascinated by plants and whilst I spoke Hindi before I spoke English, it wasn't long before I was learning the name of every plant and tree in our garden. Nothing however, prepared me for the sublime beauty of the classical English garden and once I was living in England, I began to absorb all that I saw. At the core of my thinking was a determination to imagine how one could infuse the peaceful tranquility of the English garden with a very subtle Asian heartbeat. But fate had other plans for me and before long, I was back in Asia following a career in banking and plans to become a garden designer had to take a back seat for a while.

 

Both my own and my husband's careers took us all over Southeast Asia and finally to the USA before settling back in England in 2008. I began to study formal garden design in earnest under the tutelage of the highly talented designer, Sue Gibson, who imbued in me the vital aesthetic relating to a 'sense of place'. No project will ever succeed unless the inter-relationships that exist between structure and nature are able to co-exist in harmony.

 

My first commission came in 2010 - a complete redesign of a Cotswolds manor garden. This led almost immediately to further commissions and over the past eleven years I have designed London gardens, country house gardens from parks to farm houses, commercial developments, orchards and kitchen gardens. I am supported by a team of superlative landscapers, gardeners, arborists and agronomists. I also work closely with some of the very best water installation designers, sculptors, greenhouse suppliers, swimming pool designers and tennis court builders. Most importantly, I manage every project personally including overseeing (and taking part in) the planting process which is often an area where projects can go awry. 

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Apart from gardens, my other passion is languages. In addition to several European languages, I speak Hindi, Bahasa Indonesia, Mandarin and Thai, each one in its own way, infusing every project I undertake.

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