Tom Stuart-Smith is a landscape designer who believes design should explore culture and respond sensitively to local traditions. He discusses two of his recent projects in India - one near Kottyam involving water management for rice paddies, and another developing hillside properties near Mumbai. Stuart-Smith takes a pragmatic approach to plant selection and uses an adaptive process responding to site conditions. He aims to facilitate connections between people and the land through design.

1. GARDEN DESIGN JOURNAL www.sgd.org.uk
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Darryl Moore looks at the upcoming work of Tom Stuart-Smith, a
strong believer in the idea that design is a form of cultural exploration
The
alchemist
A
forensic understanding of the English
garden has been clearly evident in the
designs of Tom Stuart-Smith over the past
15 years. An intimacy with its form has manifested
itself in gardens which have embodied the dialectics
between nature and architecture, garden and
landscape, the Apollonian and the Dionysian. His
fusion of tradition and modernity has betrayed
a critical, magpie-like manner towards historic
precedents, both employing and reacting against
conventions, to create works with multiple layers
of meaning, as equally rewarding to considered
readings as to the casual glance.
This rich vein of English garden culture that he
has so fruitfully mined, one in which gardens replete
with a panoply of eccentricities are created for their
own delight, is all too often taken for granted as the
norm in this nation of gardeners. Yet an awareness
of the underlying cultural and historic specificities
which shape it as a unique response to the landscape
is something of which Stuart-Smith is acutely aware.
His consideration of gardens is framed within the
wider context of the language of place, whereby
they are distinct typologies reflecting the culture of
specific regions and sites.
Consequently, simply imposing the English garden
archetype as a signature style on the international
stage is a strategy with which Stuart-Smith has
little sympathy. Instead his belief in the idea that
design is a form of cultural exploration is reinforced
by a number of diverse projects in his practice’s
increasingly global portfolio. From Marrakech
to Mumbai to Massachusetts, they engage with
traditions of placemaking which connect people to
the land, responding sensitively to cultures where
sometimes no garden-making heritage exists, but
where land management and growing are key to the
daily interaction of people with their environments.
Consideration of these factors goes far beyond
invoking the quasi-mystical ‘genus loci’, the default
rationale much overused by designers. Stuart-
Smith instead believes that the role of design should
involve a richer mix of determinants, facilitating
an alchemical interplay between the topology
and ecology of the site, as well as the culture of its
inhabitants and the personal baggage the designer
brings to each project. It is an adaptive process in
which the designer responds to terrain, vegetation,
the client’s brief, as well as the localised ways in
which landscape is managed.
Managing diverse landscapes
A couple of his recent projects in India exemplify
this process. One involves developing the landscape
around a collection of residential buildings on the
waterways near Kottyam in Kerala, working with
architects Studio Mumbai. The design involves a
sluiced flood plain system with a one-acre water
tank, whereby in the dry season the land is used
as rice paddies. In the monsoon much of the site
is under water, so a network of raised walks lined
with laterite stone are utilised to facilitate access
around the site.
The other project, also with Studio Mumbai, is a
hillside development of a dozen properties near the
township of Alibaug, across the bay from Mumbai.
Tom Stuart-Smith
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Pictured Stuart-Smith worked with architects Studio Mumbai on a project that involved collection, storage and distribution of monsoon water to create a landscape of forest, mango groves and paddies
Photo:DarrylMoore

3. GARDEN DESIGN JOURNAL www.sgd.org.uk24
UK DESIGN
Work has included defining the properties
and house locations, as well as preparing
an outline strategy for water management,
responsive to the vicissitudes of drought
and deluge. A series of rills and channels
link dams higher up the slope to large
tanks on the lower ground, acting as an
interconnecting infrastructure for the
properties. The organised collection,
storage and distribution of monsoon
water will create a thriving landscape of
forest, mango groves and paddies, allowing
gardens to flourish all year round and
which are intended to outlast the buildings,
leaving a legacy of a lush landscape.
Hydrology and agriculture may seem
a far cry from Stuart-Smith’s designs of
floriferous abundance which regularly
grace the pages of the garden glossies in
the UK, but the underlying horticultural
ethos is consistent. He has a pragmatic
approach to plants, devoid of any romantic
sentimentality, one developed over the
27 years he has been managing his own
garden in Hertfordshire, and through his
experimentation with perennial seed mixes
incollaborationwithJamesHitchmouth.He
employs a ruthless regime of removal and
replanting,inordertoachieveahorticultural
balance which avoids the unwanted result
of dominant monocultures, in favour of
complex plant communities.
From house to horizon
This no-nonsense attitude to establishing
such communities as rapidly as possible
is in evidence in a project in the Valladolid
province of Northern Spain, in a hostile
xeriscape environment of bare rock and
chalk. Again water is a key factor in the
plan, as the dry conditions allow very few
plants to grow there, and irrigation is out
of the question. Any sense of a traditional
planting plan has been shelved in favour
of a spreadsheet which charts the large
quantities of plants to be used. The scheme
involves 80 per cent native plants from
the local region, with a few exotics around
house, deployed with a subtle gradation
between the two, before filtering away to
merge with the wider landscape.
This progression from house to horizon,
or from hearth to heath, as Stuart-Smith
described it in his psychoanalytically
inspired lecture ‘Attachment, Separation
and Loss – A Meditation on Spatial
Design’, given at The Garden Museum
in 2011, is key to his thinking about the
transitions between types of landscape.
He draws a parallel with the idea of the
‘Three Natures’ espoused by Italian
Renaissance humanists, and resuscitated
by garden theorist John Dixon Hunt in his
book ‘Greater Perfections’. The tripartite
separation of landscape into wilderness,
agricultural and ornamental conceptual
divisions is a framework he finds useful
when considering the interplay of each,
within balanced arrangements which may
be either subtle or quite distinct.
Two current projects neatly highlight
the differing approaches to achieving
the balance of these divisions. The first
in Marrakech, built upon the traces of a
former Islamic garden, excludes wilderness
by proxy of its central location in the city,
reinforced by its walled enclosure, and
invites a celebration of the ornamental.
“He has a pragmatic
approach to plants,
devoid of any romantic
sentimentality”
clockwise from
top A sketch plan for
a project in the hostile
Valladolid province of
Northern Spain;
sketch of the pool in
the Valladolid project;
the Marrakech
project, built on traces
of a former Islamic
garden
Drawings:TomStuartSmith
Photos:AndyHamilton

4. uk design
www.sgd.org.uk GARDEN DESIGN JOURNAL 25
Drawing upon the site’s history, the
design aims to reintroduce a traditional
intensely planted Islamic garden into an
area now bereft of such significant spaces,
reinstating its cultural importance.
Subtle interventions
Meanwhile, the awe of the wilderness
takes centre stage, in the second project,
a somewhat Thoreau-esque endeavour
for an art historian in the Berkshires in
Massachusetts. Stuart-Smith has created
a nuanced design embedding a newly
built steel and glass house into a densely
wooded landscape. Such an architectural
imposition could well appear conspicuous
in such a naturalistic setting, but given
the sensitivity of both Stuart-Smith and
Seattle-based architect Tom Kundig, the
effect is instead a harmonious unity. The
house sits in a clearing in the woods, with
a prairie buffering it from the tree line.
There is no evidence to the untutored eye
of intervention apart from the clearing
itself, despite the fact that the prairie is
managed planting, and a series of existing
rocks emerging from it have been pressure
washed to enhance their aesthetic effect.
In complete contrast to this, in another
clearing located a quarter of a mile from
the house is an Edenic paradise garden,
filled with flowers and vegetables, created
fittingly enough, around an old apple tree.
The scale of the endeavour is appropriately
reflected in Stuart-Smith’s signature-style
black and white aerial drawing of the
property, running to an impressive eight
feet in length.
Bringing the experiences of working
abroad back home, Stuart-Smith’s style
has loosened up a bit, becoming more
suggestive and subtle, insinuating ways
into a place rather than creating bombastic
overtures to break the door down.
Concentrating less on the large private
gardens which cemented his reputation,
his studio is now focused on a variety of
differing projects, including many in the
public realm. These particularly excite him
and his studio colleagues, giving them an
opportunity to confront different types of
challenges to those encountered in more
indulgent domestic circumstances. The
approach involves broader brush strokes
to address complex issues, such as how to
create flexible spaces which can encourage
people to have intimate encounters and
meaningful private engagements with
nature, within in a shared social setting.
The Keeper’s House garden
A number of housing projects, working
with developers in London, are currently
on the drawing board and are due for
completion within the next few years, as
is a pocket park in the city near St Paul’s.
But most recently completed is the Royal
Academy of Arts Keeper’s House garden,
an exterior cafe space opened in 2013.
The small courtyard garden appears
to be excavated out of the space between
the RA and surrounding tall buildings,
giving it a layered archeological quality,
through the juxtaposition of different
levels and adjoining steps. It is an intimate
public site which appears simple at
first viewing, but rewardingly reveals
much complex detail upon closer
Clockwise from
top left Stuart-
Smith’s nuanced
design in a densely
wooded landscape in
the Bershires,
Massachusetts;
Valladolid project,
Spain; the signature-
style black and white
aerial drawing of the
Massachusetts
project – the sketch
is eight feet in
length
Photos:AndyHamilton

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“He strongly believes in leaving things open-ended to
encourage a diverse range of responses to a place”
inspection. Carefully considered dark
narrow Flemish brickwork creates an
angular dynamic hardscape, to contrast
with a restricted planting palette of
Hakonechloa macra, Pittosporum tobira
‘Nana’, Hydrangea petioloris, Parthenocissus
quinquefolia and Trachelospermum
jasminoides. The dark canyon-like space
opens up a dialogue with the sky above,
whilst nine sculptural Dicksonia antarctica,
ranging in ages up to 200 years old,
burst forth from the ground reaching up
towards it, as if beckoning its descent.
The tranquility of the garden is a far
cry from the bustle of Piccadilly, and a
suitably reflective space for the august
art institution.
Underlying the diverse range of
projects Stuart-Smith’s practice is now
engaged in, lies an awareness of two
different experiences of gardens. The
first is the feeling of being comfortable
and feeling at ease in a landscape, where
one is able to make subtle psychological
connections to the place and can easily
relate to it. The other involves the
experience of being in a place and aware
that there are other processes going on,
that are bigger than, and independent
of the individual. It dispenses with an
anthropocentric perspective, in which the
space is simply served up for the visitor’s
benefit, in favour of an appreciation for
an overpowering feeling of ecology going
on, in which plant growth, decay and
natural processes are happening of their
own accord.
These experiences are often not
exclusive, so that the designer’s role
becomes to define a balance which
pits the creative and problem-solving
aspects of design, against a respect for
what is occurring beyond their control.
Such an approach avoids inappropriate
imposition by the designer in situations
where ego or ‘paper perfect’ graphically
orientated schemes, could become the
dominant driving force, as opposed to
how they are perceived and experienced
on the ground. Stuart-Smith insists such
a balance should be something which
is flexible and suggestive rather than
dictating exactly what people should
focus upon and how they should engage
with it. Rather than being prescriptive,
he strongly believes in leaving things
open-ended, both in terms of narrative
and spatial design, in order to encourage
unpredictability and a diverse range of
responses to a place.
For Stuart-Smith this suggestive
strategy, encouraging complexity and
individual discovery, recognises design as
a template for experience, one which is
flexible, reflective and locally responsive,
and one which actively promotes
placemaking as an increasingly important
activity which engages with natural
processes and enhances the relationships
between people, culture and place.
Above, left The
Royal Academy of
Arts Keeper’s House
garden. The small
courtyard garden
appears to be
excavated out of the
space between the
RA and surrounding
tall buildings RIGHT
xxMumbai hill sitexx