Verdant Vision: The Future of Blithewood Garden

Join us for a rare opportunity to tour Blithewood Garden and learn from Tom Stuart-Smith, internationally acclaimed landscape architect, who has created a garden design for Blithewood, post-rehabilitation. Register now.

3–4 pm — Garden Reception 
Garden stroll, cocktail and cheese reception

4–5 pm — Lecture 
Tom Stuart-Smith will present a talk entitled "Formal Gardens in Informal Settings" remotely. Ed Shackleton, a director at Tom Stuart Smith Studio and project lead for the design at Blithewood, will attend in person and be on hand to discuss the garden and answer questions.

Register

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About Tom Stuart-Smith
OBE, FLI, Hon FRIBA, MA, BLD, FSGLD, RDI

Tom Stuart-Smith is a landscape architect and garden designer whose work combines naturalism with modernity and built forms with romantic planting based on close observation of nature. He studied zoology at the University of Cambridge before completing a postgraduate degree in landscape design at Manchester University. Tom has since designed gardens, parks, and landscapes throughout the world.

Tom is a vice president of the Royal Horticultural Society, a trustee of the Garden Museum, an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, a fellow of the Landscape Institute, and a fellow of the Society of Garden and Landscape Designers. Tom was awarded an OBE in the King’s Birthday Honours in 2023 and named a royal designer for industry by the Royal Society of Arts in 2024. In May 2021, Thames and Hudson published Tom Stuart-Smith: Drawn from the Land, a critical monograph of his work by Tim Richardson, which features 24 gardens from around the world.

His projects in the public domain include several at Chatsworth, a new public garden at the Hepworth Wakefield, and the masterplan for RHS Garden Bridgewater, one of the largest recent garden projects in Europe. In London, he designed Jellicoe Gardens in Kings Cross, a new garden commissioned by the Aga Khan Development Network and Argent which opened in 2021, and oversaw the recasting of a garden by St Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London with a water basin to reflect Sir Christopher Wren’s famous dome, opened in 2022. Other recently completed projects in the UK include a new garden at Knepp Castle that seeks to maximise biodiversity and a new landscape to Aldourie Castle on Loch Ness in Scotland.

Current projects include gardens in Gujarat, New York State, Denmark, Spain, Germany, and France. He is designing a garden for Tate Britain, supported by the Clore Duffield Foundation and in collaboration with the Royal Horticultural Society, which will open in September 2026, as well as a new garden for the National Centre for Music in the center of Edinburgh.

Previous projects have included Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s Jubilee Garden at Windsor Castle, Trentham Gardens in Staffordshire, the Bicentenary Glasshouse Garden at RHS Garden Wisley, and the Keeper’s House Garden at the Royal Academy of Arts. Tom has also designed nine award winning gardens for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, all of which were presented with gold medals and three Best in Show awards between 1998 and 2024, for sponsors including Chanel, Laurent-Perrier, the Daily Telegraph, and the National Garden Scheme. In 2018 Tom designed a special garden in the center of the marquee, celebrating 60 years of the Garfield Weston Foundation supporting charities of all sizes across the UK and their partnership with the new RHS Garden Bridgewater. The following year he returned to design a feature garden for the RHS to celebrate the opening of Bridgewater. His international projects include Le Jardin Secret in the heart of the medina in Marrakech, a garden located on the waterways near Kottayam in Kerala, and permanent show gardens for the international horticulture exhibition at IGA Berlin 2017 and the international garden expo for Beijing 2019.

Throughout his career Tom has developed his own family garden, The Barn Garden, at home in Hertfordshire, which is open to visitors each summer. He and his wife, writer and psychiatrist Dr Sue Stuart-Smith, are also developing a community garden project on land close to their home. The Serge Hill Project for Gardening, Creativity, and Health is a nonprofit initiative based in The Orchard at Serge Hill that offers resources to local schools, charities, and other groups who wish to learn about gardening and experience the benefits of connecting to nature. The community engagement program is aimed at those who have least access to the natural world. At the heart of the project is the Apple House, a large barn built on sustainable principles and set in the middle of a garden with a huge variety of plants. It provides a venue for community use by local schools and charities, and hosts talks and events.

The Serge Hill Project is also collaborating with the charity Sunnyside Rural Trust to establish a plant nursery in the Orchard that will employ people with learning disabilities. The Serge Hill Project has gained international media interest and been featured in the Financial Times, the Telegraph, and extensively throughout the gardening press.

Learn more about the Serge Hill project here.

For more information, call 845-758-6822, e-mail [email protected],
or visit https://bardian.bard.edu/register/verdantvision.

Time: 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm EDT/GMT-4

Location: Blithewood

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