Tom Stuart-Smith on Landscapes, Legacy & The Uplifting Power of Nature

Summary

Homing Podcast – Episode Summary

Episode: Tom Stuart-Smith on Landscapes, Legacy & The Uplifting Power of Nature
Host: Matt Gibberd
Guest: Tom Stuart-Smith (Landscape Architect)
Recording Location: The Apple House, Serge Hill Estate, Hertfordshire
Date: March 5, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode centers on Tom Stuart-Smith, one of Britain's most celebrated landscape architects, and his lifelong relationship with the Serge Hill estate. The conversation delves into the intersection of home, landscape, legacy, and emotional wellbeing, exploring how the act of shaping the land simultaneously shapes one’s own life and outlook. Tom shares stories from his childhood, talks about multi-generational stewardship, and reflects on the healing potential of nature. The episode visits themes of belonging, creativity, and the evolving role of gardens in personal and community life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Tom’s Lifelong Connection to Serge Hill ([02:36]–[06:09])

• Tom grew up on Serge Hill estate, just 200 yards from where he currently lives. The estate was purchased by his grandfather in the early 20th century.
• Childhood was idyllic and nature-filled, with freedom to roam, climb trees, and partake in family Shakespeare plays.
• The physical continuity of living on the same land has deeply influenced both his professional and personal identity.

"I've moved really 200 yards in all my life. And I've never lived away from here other than when I was a student for more than a couple of years." (Tom, 02:45)

The Parallel Growth of Family and Landscape ([08:50]–[11:00])

• When Tom and his wife Sue settled at Serge Hill in their mid-20s, the land was open wheat field. Every tree and plant was planted by them.
• The simultaneous maturing of the garden and their children feels like raising a 'vegetal family' and a human family, side by side.

"It's almost like having two parallel families, a sort of vegetal family and a human family growing up at the same time." (Tom, 08:58)

• The landscape gradually reshapes one’s perspective:

"Everything is changed by this environment that is gradually shaping itself around you." (Tom, 09:45)

Identity, Privilege, and Belonging ([08:33]–[12:36])

• Tom reflects on the sense of place—how a deep attachment to land shapes one’s sense of self.
• He acknowledges the privilege of such rootedness and the responsibility that comes with stewardship.

Education and Shifting Paths ([12:36]–[14:50])

• School for Tom was both liberating and sometimes stifling. The transformative experience came with travel, especially a life-changing visit to Italy at 18.
• Realized he was less suited for pure science and found his calling in landscape architecture after initial studies in zoology.
• Meeting and later marrying Sue, a psychotherapist and author, further informed his understanding of the mind-nature connection.

Professional Inspirations ([18:02]–[20:55])

• Mentorship from Geoffrey Jellicoe and Lanning Roper reinforced the possibility of landscape architecture as a serious, passionate, and diverse profession.
• Initial discomfort with designing for private clients led Tom to focus first on creating his own garden and then public and show gardens.

Career Launch and Chelsea Flower Show ([21:09]–[24:05])

• Tom’s professional breakthrough came after a feature on his garden in House and Garden and a high-profile commission for Chanel at Chelsea Flower Show.
• Achieved major acclaim with nine Chelsea gold medals.
• Tom emphasizes the importance of designing with plants and being mindful of gardens’ broader ecological and social roles.

Landscape, Gardens, & Public Perception ([22:51]–[26:15])

• British garden culture is highly plant-oriented but sometimes lacks broader design literacy.
• Increasingly, architects and garden designers collaborate to blend buildings and planting in richer ways.
• Tom is critical of older notions of architectural ‘island’ design, affirming instead the benefits of closer integration with nature.

"I entirely reject... this pearl on the cushion notion of architecture." (Tom, 25:25)

Behind-the-Scenes at Chelsea ([26:49]–[31:15])

• Describes the complex logistics and pressures of creating show gardens, including memorable near-disasters.
• Notable story: steel elements being vandalized and the resulting scramble to restore them for the show.

Home Life: Barn Conversion and Garden Design ([31:15]–[35:02])

• Tom and Sue’s home is a converted medieval barn, with creative reuse of outbuildings as bedrooms and studio.
• The garden, developed from old farmyard and fields, now features zones like a prairie, meadows, the Plant Library, and hedged enclosures, echoing the patterns of local landscape history.

Heritage & Restoration ([34:12]–[36:31])

• Current projects include replanting historical hedgerows and restoring long-lost field names, providing deep historical and personal continuity.
• Notable field names: Dead Woman's Field, Sumpters, and Dead Man Wood.

Rewilding and Biodiversity ([36:42]–[39:51])

• Tom discusses the movement towards rewilding, the balance between wildness and care, and the surprising biodiversity of cultivated yet ‘gardened’ spaces.
• Emphasizes the emotional and societal necessity of beauty and complex, mosaic-like environments.

"Beauty, I think, is an existential need... If we're in an environment where there is beauty, we're kinder, we communicate better." (Tom, 39:31)

The Apple House: Architecture for Community ([39:51]–[45:58])

• The Apple House, designed by son Ben, serves as a flexible, robust community space for events, education, and therapeutic gardening.
• Sustainably constructed with local materials—unfired clay, hempcrete, split oak shingles from estate trees—with a focus on durability and tactile beauty.
• The building forms a new heart for the estate, spatially and socially.

"It gives a kind of heart to it, doesn't it? Everything seems to sort of emanate out from the building." (Tom, 46:10)

The Uplifting Power of Nature ([47:26]–[50:25])

• Tom discusses the tangible mental and physical benefits of hands-on gardening and time spent outdoors.
• For him, gardening is both meditative and grounding—a much-needed counterbalance to the busyness of work.

"I'll spend two hours in the garden and everything sort of falls calmly into place again." (Tom, 50:12)

Environment, Family, and Legacy ([51:14]–[56:37])

• Tom and Sue’s approach to family echoes his own upbringing: freedom, access to friends, and the acceptance of the garden as a dynamic, lived-in space.
• On home and belonging, Tom recognizes his optimism and desire to share the lands' benefits with others.

"You create a landscape, and it creates you." (Tom, 53:58)

• Reflects on the privilege and responsibility of generational stewardship; the estate is a ‘lung’ for the community as much as a personal refuge.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Belonging:
  "For me, it's been one of the most profound things in my life... It's almost like having two parallel families, a sort of vegetal family and a human family growing up at the same time." (Tom, 08:50)
• On Gardens vs. Architecture:
  "There's something more forgiving... landscape just carries on giving and growing and developing and looking back at you." (Tom, 09:38)
• On Beauty and Human Need: "Beauty, I think, is an existential need... I think we grossly underestimate the need for people to be in touch with beauty and how that... makes us more generous towards other people." (Tom, 39:31)
• On Landscape Shaping Self: "You create a landscape, and it creates you." (Tom, 53:58)
• On Family Rituals: "Every summer, we would finish off the summer by having the family Shakespeare play." (Tom, 11:35)
• On the Apple House's Role: "It gives a kind of heart to it, doesn't it? Everything seems to sort of emanate out from the building." (Tom, 46:10)
• On the Relief Found in Gardening: "I'll spend two hours in the garden and everything sort of falls calmly into place again and these things which seem insuperable difficulties three hours before suddenly are pushed back into perspective." (Tom, 50:12)
• On Leaving Serge Hill: "Certainly not in the last 15 years. No. Because we've become so entrenched here... It may all come to an end at some point. It'd be sad if it did. But I hope that this place can remain a kind of lung for a long time yet." (Tom, 56:37)

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:36] – Early childhood and generational story of Serge Hill
• [08:50] – Parallel growth: family and landscape
• [12:36] – Education, inspiration, travel epiphany
• [18:02] – Paths into landscape architecture and mentorship
• [21:09] – Establishing career, Chelsea Flower Show
• [31:15] – Description of the barn and garden evolution
• [34:12] – Hedgerow and heritage restoration, field names
• [36:42] – Rewilding and biodiversity in gardens
• [39:51] – The Apple House: function, design, and materials
• [46:10] – Relationship between Apple House and garden
• [47:26] – Nature, wellbeing, and the act of gardening
• [51:14] – Impact of home and estate on Tom’s children
• [52:36] – What ‘home’ means to Tom
• [53:58] – The mutual shaping of landscape and self
• [56:37] – Reflection on belonging and the decision to stay

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Tone & Style

Warm, thoughtful, grateful, and gently philosophical. Tom shares with candor and wit, reflecting on privilege, stewardship, the fluidity of legacy, and the emotional sustenance provided by both family and cultivated landscape.

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This episode is a meditative journey into the ways home, land, and intentional design weave into the tapestry of personal and communal wellbeing—suggesting that what we plant and tend can ultimately nurture us in return.

Transcript

[A]

I started living in this place when I was 26, which had no trees on it. It was an open field, it was 50 acres of wheat. Everything in that environment, you know, we planted. It's almost like having two parallel families, a sort of vegetal family and a human family growing up at the same time. There's quite a lot going on and sometimes it seems like too much and then suddenly, you know, I'll spend two hours in the garden and everything sort of falls calmly into place again and these things which seem insuperable, difficulties three hours before suddenly are pushed back into perspective. There's quite a lot of sort of nostalgia in that and maybe sort of self reflexiveness that you're walking through this thing that you created and then you have this uncanny feeling that it is having almost more of an influence on you than you ever had on it.

[B]

Hello there and welcome to a new episode of Homing. I'm Matt Gibbard. Today's guest is the landscape architect Tom Stuart Smith. Tom's designed gardens at places like Chatsworth, Tate Britain and the Hepworth in Wakefield. He's won no less than nine gold medals at the Chelsea Flower show and was awarded an OBE in 2023. But long before any of that, he grew up here on the Serge Hill estate in Hertfordshire, which was originally bought by his grandfather. Tom spent his childhood climbing its trees and and staging Shakespeare plays in the garden. And apart from a brief spell away, he's lived just 200 yards from his childhood home for almost his entire life. Tom's wife sue is a psychotherapist and author of the book the well Gardened Mind. Their shared ideas about the uplifting power of nature have come together to form the Serge Hill Project, which is a part of the estate where community groups like schools and young offenders and people recovering from illness can come and get hands on with the garden. At its heart is the Apple House, a beautiful modern pavilion designed by their son Ben, which is where we recorded this podcast. Tom gave me a tour of the building and the surrounding garden, which is available as always on Patreon. This is a conversation about what it means to be profoundly connected to a place. Tom has spent the majority of his life on the same plot of land, digging and planting and somehow reshaping himself in the process. You create a landscape, he says, and it creates you. Here it is, and I hope you enjoy listening. Hi, Tom.

[C]

Let's start at the beginning. So where did you grow up? Did you grow up on this?

[A]

Yeah, well, I grew up 200 yards over there.

[C]

How amazing.

[A]

So, yeah, I suppose I'm a very rare and very privileged beast in that I've moved really 200 yards in all my life. And I've never lived away from here other than when I was a student for more than a couple of years. I lived in London for a very short period when sue and I first got married. But we came back to live here when we were 26, so 27 maybe. So really young, you know, and we started. So I've lived here. I'm 65 now, so whatever that maths leads you to.

[C]

Yeah, but a long time. Most of the time.

[A]

A long time, yeah.

[C]

And that's incredibly rare, particularly in suburbia.

[B]

Right.

[A]

I mean. Okay, that's a bit disingenuous. We're not really in suburbia here, but we kind of are in a way. You know, we're 19 miles from the center of London, but thanks to green belt legislation, you know, we're an open country. But we do have hundreds of thousands of people within 10 miles of us.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. So your grandfather bought this initially, is that right?

[A]

Yeah, my grandfather bought it. He was born in 1864. Get a load of that. Cool. And he married my grandmother, who was local and she. I was brought up with her. She died in 1976. And my parents came to live here in the 50s when it was, you know, a post war. It was all. It's all struggling a bit. My dad was a great builder. I mean, that wasn't his job, he was a judge. But in the old days, judges used to get very long holidays and he used to. And he built the house which we live in. He loved, he loved, you know, he was always, always at something. Very creative man. So he rebuilt this old medieval barn which we have as our home, and some sort of pigsties and stuff, and some outbuildings which I now have my studio in. And this was an orchard which I replanted with him in the. I would say the early 80s, probably.

[B]

Okay, so when you were a child

[C]

then, which part of the estate were you in?

[A]

I was in. There's a big white house over there which is a Queen Anne house, which was then Adapted in the 18. About 1811 by an architect called Busby, who did a lot of work in Brighton and Hove, you know, that kind of thing. And it's a lovely house. It has a sort of glazed veranda with cast iron posts and very charming, very lovely quality of light. And it has a lawn and a ha ha. And a little kind of park and. Yeah, it was a pretty heavenly place to grow up. I was one of six children. My parents were very busy. We were left to get on with ourselves. You know, a bell rang at meal times and we sort of came from distant corners of the place and sort of assembled. And there was a market garden which was a hangover from the war, you know, dig for victory. And we had to work in the garden every day for an hour, I think. So, yes, it was a pretty idyllic childhood. Quite isolated, I would say, from the rest of the world. We just sort of got on and did our own thing.

[C]

What was the downside of that isolation then, do you reckon?

[A]

I don't think there was a downside, no, really, I mean, you know, we spent our time. I spent my time in the woods climbing trees. I started planting trees and gardening when I was a teenager. No, there wasn't. I can't pretend there was any remote downside. My parents were quite sociable, but in a very generous way that from teenage years onwards they basically said, the house is here for you and your friends. So when I was at university, I mean, every other weekend, particularly in the. In the vacation, you know, friends would come and stay. We'd fill the house with friends. It was. It was an amazing, amazing thing. So fortunate.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. So six siblings?

[A]

Five. Well, six.

[C]

Six of you, yeah. So where, where are you in that home?

[A]

I'm number four.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

So sort of just a bit under the radar, you know, the. The oldest ones always get it tough, don't they? I sort of realize that now. I was able to, you know, there was maybe less pressure on me. But one thing that you do do when you're a big family is it's sort of serial niche occupation, if that doesn't sound too pompous. You know, somebody, the oldest one does this. So you look around, you say, well, I'm not going to do that. The next one does that. Okay, well, that niche is occupied as well. And for me, the kind of tree gardening niche was still just about. Just about open. I think I might have been a bit of a cuckoo in that department, but I mean, I got in there and I kind of. I did kind of make it my own. And amazingly, you know, I was planting trees and working in the woods by the time I was. I say this amazingly not because I'm pretending that I'm an amazing person, just, but that I had this amazing opportunity. And I had somebody yesterday here from Hertfordshire County Council who's helping us with a bit of tree planting. And I was saying look, you know those spinnies and woodlands, you know, I planted in. In 1983 when I did a holiday job at Hertfordshire County Council and managed to wheedle some grant aid at the same time. So I've. I've just. I've just been incredibly fortunate to live in this environment where I'm walking around seeing trees that are 50, 50ft tall that I planted when I was a young man, and I'm still planting trees today.

[C]

That is quite amazing, isn't it? I interviewed someone recently and we were talking about the idea of belonging to a particular plot of land as if it's kind of your terroir, right? It's part of you. How do you explain that in your context? Do you feel like that?

[A]

I think for me, it's been one of the most profound things in my life that I lived. I started living in this place when I was 26, which had no trees on it. It was an open field, it was 50 acres of wheat. And so every tree in that environment that you see, everything in that environment, we planted. And so at the same time, as we started a family, we started creating this environment. So my children, who are now in their 30s, have grown up, fortunately, slightly slower than the trees. But that's been an amazing thing to have these two. It's almost like having two parallel families, a sort of vegetal family and a human family growing up at the same time. And as this garden and these woods have grown up, your outlook on the world has changed, literally, because you're no longer blown off your feet. Your views are limited. The way that you see the sun, the way you see the. The stars, even the way you see the moon, you know, everything is changed by this environment that is gradually shaping itself around you. And I think that one of the things that is so profoundly different about creating a garden and creating a landscape than it is about a building is obviously that you just set the process going and then it takes a life on your own. So you. Okay, I look at that and I think, well, I planted that tree, but I don't feel that I did it. I don't feel that I've. The tree has done it and time has done it. There's a wonderful sense that it's not an egocentric thing, in a way, whereas if you make a building, to some extent, you did it. It is a bit finite, and that's a wonderful thing for an architect. But I feel there's something more sort of forgiving, in a way, about landscape in that it just carries on Giving and growing and developing and looking back at you and you look out at it, and it's. It's a very rich thing.

[C]

That's really lovely. So getting back to you as a child, what kind of character were you then? If you're number four in the hierarchy? You said you're a bit under the radar. What were you like?

[A]

Oh, I don't know. I think I was a pain in the ass, probably. I think I didn't. I didn't stop talking. My brothers used to go, burble, burble, burble. And I was nuts about plants. And we had a very active childhood. You know, we had family plays every year. Then after. Then after, I had a godfather who used to write plays for his family and our family. And then from the age of about 18, my dad would put on a Shakespeare play every summer with compulsory attendance from all members of the family. It was pretty extreme. He would learn his lines every year. Every year. So he did, you know, I mean, Malvolio, I don't know how many times, and Lear, you know, the whole lot. He would learn everything. And we would not learn our lines. And we would be rebellious and stubborn and difficult. But it was a sort of, you know, one of these rituals, which was about binding. Every summer, we would finish off the summer by having the family Shakespeare play. Not really in front of an audience other than the families of those who came and. And. Or people, neighbors who had a very good sense of humor. But they were amazing fun. And some of them were, you know, some of them were pretty good. And he would make the costumes and the scenery and. Yeah, it was memorable stuff. A bit farcical at times.

[C]

And how did you get on at school?

[A]

Well, I enjoyed my first school and it was such an amazing place that I think my second school was a bit of a disappointment. You know, I went to a conventional public school and I found it a little too containing and not a liberal enough environment. So I didn't really flourish there so much. But, you know, I got through it. And like a lot of kids, I mean, the great sort of period of epiphany for me was when I left school aged 18. I mean, I'd never. Because we were a big family, we didn't go on sort of luscious foreign holidays very much. We used to pile into some old car and drive up to Liverpool and go to Northern Ireland, you know, which was. Which was fantastic. But I went to Italy for the first time when I was 18. And I mean, it just. It really. I think it really did change my life. I just was. It was a. You know, they call the Stendhal syndrome, you know, when. When Victorian ladies faint in front of Raphael portraits.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

I mean, it was almost like that. I came out of the station in Venice and saw a church opposite, which is San Simone Piccolo. It's not a Palladio church, but I thought it was. And I had a sort of false Stendhalian moment of virtually fainting in front of this view. And I think that going to Venice and going to Italy aged 18 was the moment when I thought I was going up to university to do natural sc. Pronounced zoology. And in my first week, I saw what true scientists look like. And I take my hat off to true scientists, but I'm not systematic in that kind of way. I was a dilettante kind of scientist, and I realized that pretty quick. And so I had a sort of re. You know, recalibration. Had to sort of think about what I was going to do. Unfortunately, you know, again, another fortunate thing, my parents were prepared to support me through doing landscape architecture as a postgraduate.

[C]

Yeah. So you. So before you did that, you were at, was it Cambridge?

[A]

I was at Cambridge.

[C]

You're at Cambridge, and that's where you met sue, your wife?

[A]

Right. Yes, yes. We didn't go out there then, but we became friends very early on.

[C]

Okay. How did that change then?

[A]

Well, because I decided to change from being a scientist to being a designer. She decided to. She did an English degree at Cambridge and then decided partly because her father died very young when she was at Cambridge. That sort of knocked her back a bit and made her think about what she was doing, and she decided to become a doctor. She'd never done any science before, so she had to go back and do O levels and A levels again. And at that point, her mother was living in the country. I was working my first job out beyond Oxford, and we started seeing a lot of each other then. So by that time we'd known each other for sort of seven or eight years and. Yeah. So that was wonderful. And so we're very fortunate. We share, because we have a lot of university friends in common. We share an enormous number of friends. In fact, pretty much all our friends are friends in common. Wow. Other than people who've come later through medicine, her being a doctor or me through design. So that's a rather wonderful thing. And we have now, you know, for a long time, we had different professional lives. Very, very different. And we didn't really bring them home. I didn't really Bring my gardening friends home maybe I didn't have any gardening friends. And she didn't really bring her doctoring friends home either. And then partly through, we had a festival here, the Garden Museum, their first festival of gardening and literature we had here about eight years ago. And Christopher Woodward, the wonderful director there, said to sue, why don't you do a talk on gardening in the mind? And she did this remarkable talk which lots of people had never thought about gardens in that way before. And Christopher came up her at the end and said, you have to write a book. And she thought, wow. And she spent quite a bit of time doing the research for it. And that was a wonderful moment for us because it brought our interests together. And I suppose this project is a kind of culmination of that having kind of maybe sort of been quite guarded about areas of overlap before. This is a pretty comprehensive area of overlap. Even though I'm still the one who's doing most of the gardening and most of the kind of maybe the organizing of physical things. Sure. She is doing so much of the programming of the looking after people, making sure that the community of people are very happy of thinking about what it means to be in this space and how we're relating to all the other people who have an interest in it.

[C]

So how did you first understand that this thing of landscape architecture, gardens could be a profession? And what was that? What was the genesis of that? How did you actually get into it in the first place?

[A]

Well, I was wary of it first because I thought it was about designing gardens for very wealthy people, which, I mean, I do do some of that, but. But I didn't want that to be it. And I met, when I was in my early 20s, before I did the training, I met Geoffrey Jellicoe and he was in the middle of designing a cement works in Derbyshire. I thought, oh, that's interesting. And he was also doing the drawings for this garden that never happened, the Moody garden in Florida. And that was a pretty inspiring moment. I didn't get to know him very well, but I mean, I met him five or six times I think. And the other one was a less well known. He was an American kind of society gardener called Lanning Roper, but very distinguished gardener. He did a lot of work for the Royals and people like that. Just an immensely charming man. So I think, I thought that, you know, if these guys, they're in their 70s and 80s, have such enthusiasm for their work that there must be something in this. And it wasn't just about. I think I found the idea of making gardens for individuals at that point, quite claustrophobic. And I did do a couple of private gardens when I first started off professionally. And in fact, the first gardens I ever did, I built myself. I borrowed my dad's car and went and bought bricks and laid the bricks and all this stuff in little gardens in London, and I quite enjoyed that. But I did a couple of gardens for sort of wealthy people through a couple of connections when I was in my sort of early to mid-20s, I found that too much. I found people getting the proximity. I didn't have a thick enough skin to manage that. But it was a good lesson because I realized that if you're taking on the responsibility of making a garden for an individual, it is quite a close thing, and you have to be quite resilient in that space. And you also have to be confident. You really have to know. You have to know what you're doing up to a point, because to have the confidence of persuading somebody that what you're proposing is right. So I stepped away from that private garden thing for quite a long time and had the great opportunity of making my own garden. I mean, because I moved here with sue when I was so young. I started making my own garden when I was 26, 27. And that later became the springboard to having my own, you know, setting up

[C]

my own practice, which was in 1998. Is that right?

[A]

Yeah. I mean, it's quite, you know, by today's standards, people, you know, they do. They do a garden design course, set up their own business in their 20s, you know, have a television program or whatever, or podcast.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

A year away.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

I was 38.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And, I mean, my. My moment did come through the garden here that I started making the garden. I had a piece about the garden in House and Garden. And then through this wonderful person called Tanya Compton, who still became a good friend, she introduced me to Chanel, who were looking for somebody sort of suitably pliable to work with Karl Lagerfeld on a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show. And I, amazingly, got that gig. And that was a springboard, really, to be a. Be able to set up my own. My own design practice and start a career which was very much built on appearances at the Chelsea Flower show, which I did a lot of in the noughties, you know, from about 1998 through to 2010. I was there sort of pretty much every year or every other year. And then I just had a big break from that and concentrated more on making these public Gardens and larger private gardens. But certainly, you know, that little period of quite a long period of making show gardens was a great experience and a great sort of testing ground of ideas.

[C]

Yeah. I want to ask you about Chelsea because, I mean, you've had phenomenal success there as well. Of course, that nine goals you've had at Chelsea.

[A]

Something like that. Yeah.

[C]

I mean, it's amazing, really. So how do you assess the Chelsea Flower show as, you know, what's its sort of overall value? Do you see what I mean? What's the impact of it?

[A]

Well, I mean, it still has a lot of exposure. It gets so much television time. I'm not sure that it's international appeal in the design canvas is not quite what it could be. I don't know quite what that is. I feel that's partly because of the space that gardening occupies in Britain, that it is a very. We have a very individual take on gardens. It's quite quirky, it's sometimes quite kitsch. You know, if you went to a garden show in Belgium or France, I mean, it would be. Or German, it would be very, very different. It'd be much more design literate, I'd have to say. Okay, so we're very plant orientated, which I think is a wonderful thing. We do know more about plants than just about any other nation on earth when it comes to temperate plants, and that's a wonderful thing. People do turn to the British for our knowledge about plants, but sometimes we get lost in the. Lost in the plants and don't look enough at the. At the actual design of what we're doing.

[C]

That's interesting that, isn't it? Because it's very tempting, I think, as an amateur to go into a garden center and pluck a few things that look nice and then stick them in your garden.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And that's presumably not what you would advocate.

[A]

Well, I used to give my mother plants and she'd say, oh, darling, I'm going to put it in front of the front door. And I think, oh, don't do that. The area in front of the front door became a kind of serial graveyard of gifts. Yes. And I think plant centeredness is a wonderful thing. It's so good. And actually, as I design more, I do put less hard stuff into gardens than I used to. I think I used to over build things. Too much concrete, too much hard. And increasingly realize that people respond to being surrounded by plants in a way that they don't respond to being surrounded by concrete. And I think increasingly it's wonderful to See that. So many architects I work with, really great architects, say, please cover my building in greenery. I do a lot of work with Jamie Faubert, Field and Fowls. How Tompkins. Really wonderful architects at the forefront of what they're doing, Studio Mumbai. And I enjoy working with them because they absolutely want this close interfusing of built form, external space and the planted sort of rich environment. And I don't think that there were many architects in that space 25 years ago. It was the kind of no limitangerie, kind of Richard Meyer kind of thing. The architecture as a swallow dive with all the greenery pushed well behind, which I think is just completely outmoded. I think there are some great architects who still occupy that space, but I think the younger generation in their practices are sort of realizing that it is not where we should be. This pearl on the cushion notion of architecture, which I entirely reject.

[C]

Yeah. I went to the Chelsea Flower show this year and it really struck me, actually, that every garden had some sort of pavilion involved with it. There was a studio weave one, for example. And that fusion, as you talk about between the architecture and the landscape, I thought was actually the most interesting thing about it. Could you just give us a sense of what the logistics are like of putting together a show garden and it having to be absolutely perfect for one particular week and kind of. What goes wrong with that? Cause it seems logistically very difficult.

[A]

It is logistically quite difficult. I mean, you have to have quite a bit of contingency planning. You have to have a really, really good team. I mean, I'm doing it again. I'm being wheeled out again next year. I'm doing one for Tate because we're making this very exciting garden around Tate Britain, completely transforming that interface between Millbank and the building. Lots of plants, lots of porous surfaces, lots of, you know, biomorphic stuff, lots of great sculpture. And we're going to give a sort of bit of a preview at Chelsea, and that's quite challenging because we need to use all the plants we use at Chelsea Bar. A few that will come from here and come back here will go on to Tate. So that's a big constraint. And a lot of the plants we're using it, Tate, are climate resilient trees. And the thing about quite a lot of these climate resilient trees, particularly things that like hot temperatures, they don't come into leaf until quite late in spring. So that is an anxiety for me that, you know, that some of these trees won't be very leafy and people will be saying, that doesn't look very healthy, but, you know, that's what it is. And a lot of these trees come from European nurseries, so there are big biosecurity issues there. So at the moment we're having to bring all the plants together in a nursery in northern Italy and then we have to have a biosecurity inspection from the Royal Horticultural Society there. Then we have to bring them in. We have to get the timing right so they don't sit in a lorry for too long. Then we have to look after them over here. Then we have to make sure that we have, you know, if something gets damaged, that we have backups. We have to grow probably half again the quantity of plants that we would actually use in the garden because some don't make it. I'm personally not somebody who's particularly worried about whether something's in flower or not. I like there to be a sort of degree of truthfulness about. I don't want to push things too far. But we will grow some things in polytunnels here. Well, we have poly. Sorry, I shouldn't overeg it. We have an apolytunnel. I'll be putting a few things in there. I like it because it's a great team effort. It's a wonderful opportunity for my team to get involved. Hands on. It's a fun piece of theater, but it does take close planning and I have to work with somebody in my team who doesn't leave anything to luck. You know, you can't just say, oh, well, let's hope that works on the day.

[C]

Have you had any disasters?

[A]

I've had a few near disasters. I mean, we did. We did a Garden in 2005 with the Telegraph and we used tons and tons of corten steel. I mean, again, you know, something I wouldn't do. Now, the idea of using all this steel and in those days we didn't worry about what happened to it afterwards. It would just sit in somebody's yard. In fact, it's in my courtyard garden because the telegraph said, oh, take it away, we don't want it. They didn't ask me for any money. I said, sort of, can we pay you for it? And they said, no, no, just take it away. Anyway, that was a bit dramatic because it was all in the contractor's yard and some kids broke in, literally the day before it was going to be delivered to site and rode and used these big corten sheets as BMX ramps, you know, bicycling, and drove bicycles all so they had tire marks all over them, so we had to sandblast the whole lot down back to the raw steel, like 10 days before the show was opening. And then rely on rapid rusting.

[C]

Can't you wee on it or something? That's what you do with copper, isn't it?

[A]

You use dilute hydrochloric acid. But then that's another story. Mark Fain, who runs Crocus, who's our wonderful contractor, went to get some hydrochloric acid from the chemistry and then two weeks later has a visit from MI5.

[C]

Seriously?

[A]

Special Branch. Because it's a sort of essential component of bomb making equipment. That's incredible. These things you don't know. That's so good. I love that.

[C]

Thank you, Tom. So let's talk about this place. So you live in the barn, you said. So just describe that to us. What's that like as a home?

[A]

It's a medieval Barn. It is 17 meters long, five and a half meters wide, with a gable, probably. Yeah. About five, six meters tall to the apex. So as barns go, it's quite a small barn, which makes it deeply habitable and quite cozy, as barns go. And it is our sort of living space. I mean, we don't cook in it or watch telly in it or sleep in it, but it's just one big room up to the beams, and that's a wonderful, wonderful thing. It's very light.

[C]

So where are the bedrooms, then?

[A]

They're in what used to be the pigsties.

[C]

Okay.

[A]

And they're off. They have one long corridor which runs down the side of the building and they're rooms off it.

[C]

So it's all attached together there.

[A]

They're all attached together and they pretty much sit on the footprint of what was there from the 17th century onwards. And they form three sides of a courtyard, which is a garden. When we first moved there, that was full of lettuces and stuff. And then we replaced it with this Chelsea offcuts from 2005. And then from the early 90s, we were able to buy some of the land around it and start making a garden. And sort of gradually we've seeped our way out into the. Into the countryside.

[C]

Well, tell us about the garden as well. I mean, you talked about the Corten. If I think about Tom Stuart Smith, I think about those Corten structures in your garden. That's. Yeah, interestingly. Yeah. So, yeah, tell us about the garden.

[A]

Well, I mean, the Corten was a sort of. Was a freebie, but it was a Very appropriate freebie, because when I was a child, this, this, this. This farm courtyard was a rusty old place with. With. With a horse and a pig and that was about it, and lots of rust and lots of rats. And so it seemed like a sort of a way of revisiting that, but in quite a crisp way. And then as we've extended out into the landscape, we really began our garden making life as a way of giving ourselves shelter from the wind, because we were on top of a windy hilltop and we had small children and you needed somewhere to go. And I suppose we started making these sort of, kind of hedged enclosures, partly because, you know, hedges were the language of the landscape around here. So in some ways, the garden, you know, is a bit like a sort of intensification of landscape pattern. You know, it's just a more dense version of what we've got around us.

[C]

I love that.

[A]

And in fact, what I'm doing at the moment is now we've got some of the land back from the tenant farmer who's given up farming. Just excitingly this year, we're putting back some of the hedges that were on the tithe map of 1842. And the thing I almost love most about that is we get the field names back. So, for instance, there's a field called Dead Woman's Field. Well, what's the name there? Which was lost when the hedgerow between it. And another field called Sumpsters, which is a. A field for Sumpters, I should say, which is a field for draft animals, you know, ponies and maybe donkeys pulling wagons. When that field was removed, those names are no longer valid.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And interestingly, the field, the wood next door to it, did keep its name, but it had a sex change. Around 1900, it changed to Dead Man Wood, which is what it is now. So I'm very excited by the idea of putting back these sort of. These lines which restore the names. And so the garden got a little bit out of control, I would say, about 15 years ago, as I just wanted to experiment with more ways of looking after things, in a way. And I would say that the garden is almost a tapestry of care, you could say, of different ways of looking after vegetation. There's a meadow, there's a prairie, which is mainly North American vegetation, which we just cut down once a year, but we do pull out weeds, not very much. Then there's this project over here, the Plant Library, which is largely maintained by volunteers and is a systematic way of gardening of each plant, absolutely has its place and you don't allow any intruders into it. And it occupies its square meter come hell or high water. I mean, husbandry is a rather a loaded word because it sort of seems rather sexist. But this thing of looking after land in different ways and seeing what happens, seeing what happens to biodiversity, seeing what happens to plants, you know, how much do they change over time and what impact that has aesthetically as well, you know, what it does to your lived environment.

[C]

Yeah. So interesting. I want to ask you about rewilding because you did a walled garden, didn't you, which is Isabella Trees Estate.

[A]

Right.

[C]

She wrote a brilliant book about rewilding, which I think is excellent. But I suppose she's at the forefront. It feels like a bit of a movement towards rewilding the land. So what's your view on that?

[A]

I think the rewilding garden movement is a wonderful, wonderful thing. It's a rebalancing of the way we've gardened for a long time, using much too much herbicide, much too much mowing, too much of suppressing nature rather than letting it out. But for instance, this plant library is very much not a rewilder garden, but it is very biodiverse and very rich in insect life. Interestingly, we did a biodiversity survey of this just two years after planting this and into, into pretty much sterile conditions. You know, we cleared the ground to start with and then planted this, this huge matrix of plants. And we found it was hugely much more biodiverse than the, than the condition it started from, which was this paddock, which actually hadn't been sprayed for probably 50 years or if ever. Now you could say that's because this is like a sort of tourist spot. This is the kind of Las Vegas strip. And all the insects are coming in here to sort of feed on our wonderful pollinating and nectar rich plants. But they're actually going back into the paddock or into the woods to live. Well, fine. But I mean, they're still here having a wild time and getting fat on the proceeds. So we're providing a great service to them. A lot of it, I feel, is about this thing that you want to create complex environments and mosaic like environments. And I think that's what we're doing here. And we will rewild part of our land here. But I don't want to rewild the whole thing. I want to have some bits which are very much gardened, some bits which are quite controlled like this, where we protect a little square meter plot for a particular plant over a long period. Of time and some areas which are sort of halfway in between. I mean, beauty, I think, is an existential need. Absolutely. If you look at these extraordinary studies on refugees in refugee camps, many refugees will want to grow flowers before they grow food because it is both a reminder that life can be better, but it's also our need for beauty. And I think that we grossly underestimate the need for people to be in touch with beauty and how that has very fundamental impact on our outlook on life. I think it does make us more generous towards other people. If we're in an environment where there is beauty, we're kinder, we communicate better. It just has this overall softening but also heightening effect on our perceptions.

[C]

Yeah. So speaking of beauty, we're sitting in a very beautiful building, I think, called the Apple House, which was designed by your son, Ben Stuart Smith. What was the genesis of this building? Why is it here?

[A]

We wanted a. Hub is a fashionable word, isn't it? We wanted a place where we could invite local schools, groups that might be in some kind of recovery, whether it's from. Well, we have a whole variety of groups. We have young offenders groups, we have people recovering from cancer, we have other kind of therapeutic groups. We wanted a space which felt welcoming, natural, that was very outward looking into the garden, where we could have events that would raise money to pay for some of the stuff we're doing. Where we could have, let's say we've just had a two day symposium on water in the landscape. A very, very multi purpose kind of building where maybe 10 people would feel comfortable. But also we could have an event for 100 people. And so it's very simply done. It has a kitchen for cooking, it has a big kind of, you could say classroom space, but it's just like a sort of multipurpose space. It has a little mezzanine office for the people who are running the building, a bunch of storage, a disabled loo shower, you know, that's it really. It's a very simple thing, but it does well for us. You know, it's extremely robust. It's not a prissy building that has to be kept, you know, sort of dusted down the whole time. Okay. It's got lots of windows, which, you know, sticky fingers. But beyond that, you know, the floor is tough, the walls are tough. It can take a little bit of sort of light abuse, which is great.

[C]

Yes, exact. So you kindly showed me around earlier and we'll make that tour available to subscribers on Patreon so they can have A look if they want to. But for those that are just listening, just talk us through the materials here, because I think that's what's kind of interesting about this place. It talks through what the wall's made of on the floor.

[A]

Well, if we go from the bottom upwards, I mean, it has this beautiful floor which is made of unfired clay blocks. So they are made by H.G. matthews, who are well known, kind of quite pioneering brick firm in Bovingdon, which is fortunately five miles away from here, and they dig the clay out of there. We did want to use clay from here, but the clay wasn't good enough. Had lots of flints in it and stuff. So it's made into these blocks which are. What are they? About 14 inches? 35, 40 cm by 125 cm, something like that, yes. So they're big. They're big, yeah. And we found that they, at their full depth, which is 4 inches, they were too insulating. So we chopped them in half, which actually was quite economic. And then we laid them and jointed them with. With a clay mortar, which all sounds rather counterintuitive, doesn't it? So the blocks themselves are just clay and straw dried, and then they are sealed with about 8 or 10 coats of linseed oil, which you have to let dry between them. So that's quite a long process, but it polymerizes and forms this incredible seal, which is very, very robust. And the walls are hemp Crete, so they are shuttered up with softwood between the timber. What would you call these vertical timber? They're glulam elements, which are about 4 inches wide, which are structural, and they're continuous with the roof beams. And in between them you've got these deep recesses which are about a foot deep, maybe more than that, which are a solid hempcrete, which, as I said, was shuttered up on the inside and then tamped down. So it's a building with deep walls, which gives it a real sense of sort of weightiness of the landscape, which I love. I can't bear thin walls. And, of course, means it stays. It stays warm in winter and cool in summer. And then the roof is sort of sheathed in ply in the inside, lots of insulation above that, and quite a cheap tin roof on the outside. But it's a nice deep pitch. It's black. It looks good, I think. And with a very deep overhang with these lovely timber rafters, the water drains straight out onto the paving and then into a gravel. Either gravel surround or a hidden Slot drain. So there are no gutters on the building, which I think is good. Then the outside of the building is clad in split oak shingles, some of them as long as about a meter and a half. And they were trees growing within 500 yards of this building, which we felled and then split. They're split like a cake. So in these very narrow wedge like sections. And they give the building a sort of animation, particularly in sort of raking late light. It gives the building a wonderful sort of kind of. Crafted is a rather overused word, isn't it? But it's made of a living thing, the outside. I think the cladding on the outside is a thing of real beauty.

[C]

I agree. How does the building change the garden? Because, you know, I'm really interested in this relationship between the two. How does having this building here elevate what's outside?

[A]

Well, it gives a kind of heart to it, doesn't it? Everything seems to sort of emanate out from the building. You know, on one side of it we have the nursery, on the other side we have the main, you know, the main plant library. It's also a kind of counter to the old house sitting 200 yards away with the stable block, which they seem to act almost as bookends to this space. It gives us some protection from. Although there's a big hedge between us and the open fields to the east. There's also the motorway over there half a mile in the distance. So it gives us some sort of sound protection from that. I mean, it's a bit big and a bit rough for a jewel, isn't it? But it is like this, the jewel and the garden provides the setting of it in the way that you create a setting of a ring, that the garden becomes this sort of beautiful, ordered incrustation around this as the center of the space.

[C]

I really like that your wife sue has written this brilliant book which you've alluded to the well gardened mind.

[B]

But from your perspective, can you just

[C]

tell me about how you see the link between physically getting your hands in the soil and feeling better about yourself and the world?

[A]

Yeah. This weekend I went on a sort of retreat with the Royal Designs of Industry to Dartington and I came back and started working straight away on Monday and I just, I felt, oh my God. God, I haven't been into the garden this weekend. I really, really felt it often because I'm gardening, I garden so often or I'm in a garden often, I don't feel that sense of nature deprivation. And it is for me, partly filled by just being in nature. If I go on holiday and I'm walking in landscape, I don't feel such a burning need to get my hands dirty. But there is something about this engagement, this physical engagement about actually being in the stuff which has become very, very important to me. I actually love digging. I'm looking forward this weekend. We have a tricky area of the garden over here where we have lots of couch grass that has got buried by compost about a foot deep. And I'm really quite looking forward to getting in there and digging over this patch and getting all that couch grass out and just getting, getting the sort of compost on my hands. Getting hot and hot and dirty. But yeah, I mean, yes, hot and dirty. I mean, I love, I love just being exhausted, coming in, feeling that I've just done stuff in the soil and that I've been with plants and handling them and planting them and digging them up and working with them and my. They're my sort of fellows on this planet, you know, that's. That is an amazing thing which is wonderful to share. I have to say. I'm quite a solitary gardener. I like being in the garden on my own. I love the fact that all the volunteers here are gardening together and they're always chatting away like starlings while they're gardening. For me it's not so much like that. My work is pretty busy and for me the garden has always been a place to just get stuck in and sort of. Nature is my, my big partner, I suppose, in that.

[C]

Is there anything else that you do for your well being in that way? Apart from gardening, I would say.

[A]

I mean, I read and that is important to me. That's also about sort of occupying this separate space. And of course, when you have a long day's work, it's quite difficult to sort of go and Garden at 9 o' clock at night. So reading before I go to bed, I have to do that, even if it's a short amount. I just have to do enough to get into a separate space, to get into a separate imaginative space of your brain. Just not being in that kind of washing machine of daily thoughts.

[C]

What is it for you that contributes most to that washing machine? What is it that stresses you out?

[A]

I wouldn't say it necessarily stresses me out. I don't think it's so much stress, it's just too much stuff going on. Whether it's this project, whether it's the pleasure, which is 99% of it, of employing quite a few people, whether it's running a lot of different projects and the demands that that brings with it, it's all of that. But inevitably there's quite a lot going on. And sometimes it seems little moments, if you don't create enough space in your life, it seems like too much. And then suddenly I'll spend two hours in the garden and everything sort of falls calmly into place again. And these things which seem insuperable difficulties three hours before suddenly are pushed back into perspective.

[C]

You brought your kids up here, right? How would you assess how this place has shaped them and who they've become?

[A]

I hope it was a kind of liberating place. We rather like my parents did, you know, we encouraged them to bring their friends here. I hope I wasn't too precious about what happened in the garden. You know, lots of football happened there. My middle son, my youngest son, who used to strip cars apart and rebuild them with very powerful engines and would drive these cars around at very high speed.

[C]

Oh, really?

[A]

It's very exciting for his friends. Yeah, like really high speed. You know, little, little, little like cinquecentos with the top sawn off with, with a powerful engine inside. It's fantastic fun. The Kiwis call them paddock cars. Very good to have a paddock car when you're young. That's excellent.

[C]

I always ask this question to everyone, but in your case, it feels particularly relevant to me in the sense that you have been on this site the vast majority of your life. So I suppose I'll ask this question beyond the bricks and mortar of home, what does that word home mean to you and what does this place mean to you and how is it an important facet of who you are?

[A]

I feel it's kind of like I see life through these kind of maybe slightly rose tinted spectacles which are created by the world that I live in. And I've spent so much of my time in this place that it is that filter through which I'm lucky enough to see the world. And maybe it makes me into an optimist because I certainly am. I think as a designer you have to be an optimist anyway. You have to hope that there is a better way of doing things and that you can be part of that. So I think it's just given me amazing opportunities which I feel very, very fortunate to have. And maybe slightly late in life I've wanted to kind of share some of those opportunities with other people, maybe give people some of that sort of optimism. But actually, more than anything else, I just love the thing of Sharing this beautiful bit of world with other people, and that's an entirely selfish thing. It's just great to see people enjoying a place and enlivened by it, I think.

[C]

Yeah, there's that brilliant Winston Churchill quote where he said something like, we shape our buildings, thereafter, they shape us. And I read actually an interview that you did and you said something very similar. And I don't think you're being deliberately Churchillian about it, but you said, you said you create a landscape and it creates you, which I thought was really lovely. What do you mean by that?

[A]

Well, there is this feedback process which you don't really envisage when you start making it, but if you make it and then live in it, you start off by sort of propelling it into existence and then it sort of turns back on you and starts making you the person you are. And I think that there's quite a lot of sort of nostalgia in that and maybe sort of self reflexiveness that you're walking through this thing that you created and then you have this uncanny feeling that it is having almost more of an influence on you than you ever had on it. And the wonderful thing about landscape is that that is not a limiting thing. It seems to be a liberating thing. It's not a confining thing. It's not closing things down unless you have created a sort of 20 foot high hedged, inward looking space. So I think it's important to create landscapes that have porosity, that are exploratory and that are, to a degree, can be outward looking. And that is part of what sue and I are doing here is not to seal ourselves off from the world.

[C]

What I found so interesting about meeting you here today is that this place has been in your family since the 1920s or whatever it is. Your grandfather was here, your parents, and now you, and potentially future generations as well. But for most of us, we don't have that same kind of sense of belonging to a place, so we sort of have to manufacture it. So I always find that quite a difficult process because we get itchy feet and we think, well, maybe we should belong somewhere else and why don't we live here? And our friends are really happy in the west country or Suffolk or America or wherever it is. And you think, well, maybe I'd be happy there too. Do you ever question the fact that you live here? Does it ever occur to you that, oh, maybe we could go and live somewhere else?

[A]

It doesn't anymore. I mean, there was a time when sue and I Had been here for about sort of 10 years, I guess, when for a little bit of time it got us down, you know, the fact that there were always people. I mean, you haven't really seen it, but, you know, the kind of abandoned fridge bit and the, you know, there was an old Hertfordshire specialty called take and bake, you know, used to steal a caravan or a car and then set light to it. And there were quite a lot of those going on and, you know, the sense that this was a part of the country that people hurry through to get somewhere else, to Luton Airport or to the north or, you know, and that people don't actually stop here. But that's what makes it so interesting for this project, you know, and it did mean that sue and I were able to keep ourselves to ourselves when we were growing up, which we quite liked because we were both very busy and it's not such a nimby part of the world. You know, people are not looking over the hedge and saying, oh, God, what are Tom and Sue up to? Bloody garden, you know, it's getting in the way and blah, blah, blah. There's something very refreshing about that from our point of view. And it has made this whole project possible because. Well, I would say possible. It's made it much more necessary because the diverse discrepancies of wealth and ownership are so palpable and obvious. So to go back to your question about have I ever thought about leaving? I mean, certainly not in the last 15 years. No. Because we've become so entrenched here with everything, and then now with my design studio here, the trenches are well, but I don't feel about it in a sort of dynastic way. I don't think the Stuart Smiths have been here for three generations. We're going to be here for another three. I feel back as far as my parents and my grandmother being here, and that's lovely memory and the whole of our family are very deeply connected to it. But, yes, it may all come to an end at some point. It'd be sad if it did. But I hope that this place can remain a kind of lung for a long time yet. And I feel that these green lungs, they are the places of the future that we're going to rely on to. To give us some kind of mental breathing space.

[C]

So interesting. Thank you so much, Tom. I really enjoyed that.

[A]

Thank you. It's lovely to meet you.

[C]

Yeah, you too.

[B]

Huge thanks to Tom for a very inspiring day and thanks to all of you for listening. I'm pleased to say that we've got an episode coming up soon with Tom's wife, Sue Stuart Smith. Sue and I huddled together in their greenhouse and discussed the powerful link between nature and the mind. She also took me on a tour of the amazing private gardens surrounding their house, which we'll make available on Patreon. Given that Tom's currently working on the landscaping at Tate Britain, it's also worth mentioning that we've got a podcast coming up with Maria Balshaw, director of the Tate Galleries. Maria has the most incredible house in Kent and it's definitely one of my favorite episodes, so do look out for that one. If you're not yet following the show, please tap on the follow button and these new episodes will magically appear in your feed once they get released. As always, you can follow us on Instagram and YouTube and subscribe to our house tours on Patreon. Search for Homing with Matt this episode was produced by Pod Shop with music by Simeon Walker. Thank you so much for being here and talk to you next week. Bye for now.