CHARLOTTE ROWE

The award-winning garden designer on honouring her grandfather and taking the plunge on a midlife career change

- WORDS ZIA ALLAWAY PHOTOGRAPHS RACHEL WARNE

It takes great courage and determination to cast aside a highly paid career in your late forties to take up a new challenge, but these are the qualities that have fuelled Charlotte Rowe’s success throughout her professional life. Her risk paid off, and now the former marketing and communications director heads up one of the most revered garden and landscape design practices in the UK.

Since establishing her business 21 years ago, Charlotte and her team have designed more than 300 gardens and landscapes, and banked a Gold medal at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show along the way for her No Man's Land garden; a commemoration of the First World War, and a tribute to her grandfather who fought in it.

We meet in her bright, open-plan studio in west London, where she explains that while her previous career took her in a different direction, her long-held interest in gardening stems from childhood. “My parents were both actors and lived in London, but I often stayed with my grandparents in Guernsey when I was young. They owned a large garden and gave me my own little plot, where I grew vegetables and flowers. I was influenced by my grandfather, too. A general in the army, he fought in both World Wars, but he was also a keen amateur filmmaker and talented model maker, and he designed and made beautiful gold jewellery, which may explain why I ended up in design.”