Continuing our series of interviews with creative individuals, we were very happy to welcome renowned garden designer, Sarah, as our guest for August’s Spotlight, entitled ‘The Greenest Green.’ This interview is expanded from the original version published in our monthly BuonFresco newsletter (August 2021).

Sarah Price graduated in fine art but adeptly turned her hand to garden design, rising swiftly to become one of the most sought after garden designers in Britain. She lectures widely, writes for Gardens Illustrated, House & Garden and The Telegraph, and has several accolades to her name, with RHS Chelsea golds, as well as an impressive catalogue of projects such as the gardens at London's Olympic Park, Manchester's Whitworth Art Gallery, and more recently the fragrant terrace garden at Hermès in London.

Her work is quietly captivating; full of softness, definite but gentle intention, and natural understatement. Sarah's gardens can breathe. Painterly, thoughtful, expressive and serene - with a sensitivity to colour, specimens and materials, a clear artistic vision, swathes of planting like brush-strokes and daubs, and a symbiotic cooperation with the rhythms and elements that nature throws into the mix - her creations enact a beautifully harmonious poetry between wildness and design.

With such a strong connection between art and gardens, and as designer of the courtyard garden at The Chapel where we are currently exhibiting, Sarah was the perfect guest for August's Spotlight questions, and we hope you enjoy her responses as much as we have.

Private Garden in Monmouthshire. Photo: Sarah Price

1. Your favourite shade of green?

Definitely chartreuse as it is the colour of oak leaves unfurling in spring. I love how on a veteran oak the fresh new growth contrasts with dark, gnarled branches. I'm lucky to live below the Deri, a foothill of the Sugar Loaf mountain. It is covered in Sessile oaks, many are ancient and all are short and incredibly twisted hugging the topography. The whole hillside appears delicately washed in chartreuse in early spring as their leaves unfurl. Magical.

Olympic Gardens, Great British Garden. Photo: Sarah Price

Battersea Park Thrive, London. Photo: Sarah Price

2. What does green symbolise or represent to you?

For me, green symbolises the seasons. I ‘read’ the gardening year through the ever changing tones of our landscape and in particular, the foliage of trees. Now we’re in August most foliage takes on a particular, heavy shade of green.

Visuals for RHS Chelsea 2018. Photo: Sarah Price

Sarah’s RHS Chelsea 2018 Mediterranean-inspired garden. Photo: Sarah Price

3. Green's best friends are?

I delight in seeing green and pink together but I also love spontaneous colour associations in the garden, such as that of the self-seeding Welsh poppy (Meconopsis cambrica). Its intense bursts of vermilion (and sometimes yellow) come and go through the summer months, appearing in unexpected places. It will grow in both sun and shade adding sparkle where ever it nestles.

The Chapel garden, Abergavenny. Photo: Sarah Price

4. Inspirational or notable uses of green?

Rousham Garden.

Rousham garden is William Kent’s 18th century masterpiece in Oxfordshire. Here visitors are led on an intimate and emotive journey through the garden with endless views and surprises creating a real sense of progression. At each turn there is a strong evergreen framework of trees and shrubs underpinning the garden's architecture, and in turn allowing its highlights - such as its famous serpentine rill - to shine. This rill pulls you through sequences of darkness and light; through dark green yew towards the shimmering Cold Bath. It is totally alluring, as you never see the whole rill at once.

Olympic Gardens, Europe. Photo: Sarah Price

5. Top place to immerse yourself in green?

I love Great Dixter’s Exotic Garden. It’s full of ‘tender exotics’, planted out for the summer to grow in the humid shade of a jungle of tall grasses and bananas. It’s a plant-person's paradise, a mass of details from the tiny to the dramatic - the drooping, umbrella-like palmate foliage of Begonia luxurians, and the huge, round glossy leaves of Farfugium japonicum in particular, create a glamorous statement.

SEE MORE

Follow Sarah's Instagram through the seasons, or visit her website and her beautiful and mesmerising Cuttings journal.

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SPOTLIGHT / Sarah Price, Garden Designer