Julian and Isabel Bannerman have been designing gardens, garden buildings, interiors and shops, for nearly twenty five years. They as happily do smaller gardens and one off summer houses as big landscaped parks and lakes. They are passionate about plants and planting and about getting the mood right and the sense of place whether it is making a simple place to sit out and eat or an abstract formal evergreen garden. Whatever they design the resulting garden must be practical and easy to maintain. This approach has lead them to win awards including a Gold Medal at Chelsea, Architectural Awards, competitions such as Christies ‘Garden of the Year 2008’ for the walled garden at Houghton Hall, and the British Memorial Garden to 9/11 in Manhattan, and work for clients such as the Prince of Wales for whom they most notably created the ‘Stumpery’ in the woodland garden at Highgrove. Their garden at Hanham Court is a giant laboratory for their ideas and very much a work in progress.
This year they have won three awards for ‘The Collector Earl’s Garden’ at Arundel Castle, opened by the Prince of Wales in May. Their whole endeavour is not only about a passion for plants and gardens, but also about built structures, water, woodland and the wider landscape, which may equally be an urban landscape. They have been very lucky in their clients, for whom they have strived to create places which really work and generate pleasure. Success in this comes as the result of collaboration and communication, it is about the designers understanding the needs of the client, and the client understanding the knowledge the designers have gleaned from experience. This kind of collaboration can be achieved in the smallest of gardens to great effect and delight.
Their work has appeared in articles in House and Garden Magazine; Vogue; The Telegraph and Telegraph Magazine; The Independent; World of Interiors; Garden’s Illustrated; The English Garden Magazine; Architectural Digest; and many others as well as on television and radio.
