The Society of Garden Designers, a professional association founded in 1981 for garden designers in the U.K., has been handing out awards to gardeners for the past twelve 12 years. They presented their awards last Friday night, and as in the past, this year’s picks celebrate the best of garden and landscape design in the U.K. and abroad.
Sarah Eberle won the Garden of the Year Award for her Oxfordshire project, and Haruko Seki secured the Judges’ Award for a jewel box of a private patio in London. (You can find the full list of winners here.) But the project that caught our eye was the winner of this year’s People’s Choice Award, which is the only award to be determined by public vote; it was given to garden designer Colm Joseph for a walled garden in an historic East Suffolk site.
Voters (a mix of the public and garden design industry peers) were impressed by the skillful modulation of the garden over three interconnecting spaces and remarked on the beautiful transitions between them. They also commented on the “expertly handled planting” that provides interest throughout the year, saying it was “definitely a garden you would want to live with.”
“It was a lovely surprise to win the People’s Choice award and such a great feeling to know that people took the time to vote for it,” Joseph tells us. “I think people have responded to the planting-led design, as well as the combination of modern and traditional, with the contemporary, naturalistic planting design set within an old Victorian walled garden.”
Below, a peek at the crowd-pleasing design.
Photography by Richard Bloom, courtesy of Colm Joseph Gardens.
