Angus White

Angus is the owner and begetter of Architectural Plants. Always with a design background, in 1989 he conceived the idea of having a nursery producing plants where the emphasis was always on their shapely and sculptural aspects - rather than just colour.

The new enterprise was partly as a result of his burgeoning interest in the subject but largely due to his inability to find the plants he'd fallen in love with. To him, this was a natural progression from interior design (he was formerly a furniture designer) to exterior design. A visit to the nursery and its surroundings will give a good indication of what he likes.

‘Bold, sometimes exotic but always shapely’ probably sums up his approach.

Forty years of labour to produce this extraordinary piece of sculpture in Yew. The shape, the texture, the rarity and the sheer insane devotion to an idea make this deserving of that over used word ‘extraordinary’

Right by the drive at the Nuthurst nursery and one of my favourite photos - Phillyrea latifolia and Phyllostachys pubescens complimenting each other in a rather nice Anglo-Japanese way. More importantly, the enjoyment of what we've actually done to the plants, the Creative Maintenance. The Phillyrea has been 'Niwaki - ed', the dwarf bamboo has been 'Karikomi-ed' (clipped into irregular blobs) and the bamboo has been 'lifted, cleaned, thinned, preened, detailed, groomed and God knows what else'. The result, to me, is nothing short of delicious.

Many would consider the following to be reasons to visit Venice: to gaze in awe at Palladio’s masterful Chiesa di San Georgio Maggiore, to gasp at the magnificence of La Salute, to experience the magical tranquillity of the interior of Pietro Lombardo’s church of Santa Maria dei Mirocoli, to bask in the magic of a gondola ride down the Grand Canal and to scoff Belinis and Carpaccio di Manzo in Harry’s bar. They’d be wrong. The best reason by far is to admire the Pittosporum tobiras that - for some reason - grow more beautifully, more tightly, more shapely (ly) than anywhere else in the whole wide world. Forget about those unforgettable views, the history, the mystery and the wonder of the most extraordinary city on earth - just go and look at the Pittosporums. Unbelievable.

Blobs and rolling hills in the background. Actually, clipped Ilex crenata (Japanese Holly) and the South Downs in the background. I love this photo.

Mind blowing stuff. You’re looking at a quarter of an amazing part of an amazing garden. Apologies for the hyperbole. It’s brave, it’s bold, it’s beautiful and it’s very expensive but thank God someone out there is brave enough, bold enough and wealthy enough to do it. A quarter of a pleached Hornbeam hedge avenue in a cruciform arrangement somewhere in southern England...

To use a bit of Estate Agent’s language: a deceptively small garden in Cambridge. Did the world become a better place when Geoffrey Ingham decided to transfer his donnish mind from world economics to garden design? Oh yes, I think so. This magical place has become the prototype for many gardens we’ve built. He was confronted with an overgrown mess, all of which was removed except for the self sown clump of wild cherry trees slap bang in the middle of what was once a rectangular lawn. The clump was ‘creatively maintained’ - actually he just removed all the lower branches to expose the many trunks just visible on the right of the picture - but what else is Creative Maintenance? The former lawn became a meandering path from one end of the garden to the other and the boundaries to the garden were masked by a restrained and clever use of evergreen exotics. The result is remarkable - a lesson in the smoke and mirrors approach to transforming a tiny garden in a residential area by creating the illusion of space by obliterating the boundaries. Okay, so there’s no lawn to play football on and you’ve got to be careful what you say because, despite the illusion, your neighbours are actually only a few feet away and they can hear every word you say but the result of his work is beautiful, restful and very surprising.

There are many beautiful gardens in the world and one can derive both pleasure and inspiration from visiting them but properly, shouldn’t your favourite garden be your own? If you’re keen enough on gardens to have delved as deep as this into our website, is there really any excuse for not creating a garden that is not only yours but also your favourite? This is a part of mine and it’s called the yucca bank. For historical reasons. There must have been a time when I was sufficiently keen on yuccas that it was smothered in them but things have moved on (I think that now it may contain as many as three) but it still represents - in a restrained way - my exotic past. There was undoubtedly a time in the evolution of my garden design ideas that you couldn’t be too exotic. It’s still quite spiky but it has other shapely elements - both European and Oriental and I - at this particular point in the evolution of my garden design ideas - really like it. I really like it in the summer and the winter, the spring and the autumn and what’s also quite important is that it’s mine and I don’t particularly care whether other people like it or not. If I’d built it for a customer and they didn’t like it, I’d care very much but if we do what we say we do (listen), that wouldn’t happen. Of course we impose our ideas upon our customers. We’re designers and therefore we’re extremely opinionated but nothing can give us more pleasure than to create a garden for another human being that they grow to love above all other gardens. A lofty ambition.