EDUCATION OF A GARDENER

Designer Adam Woodruff reflects on his personal garden beside a New England harbour shaped by years of travel, study and thoughtful experimentation

- 

Redstone Lane is more than my home garden. It's an experiment shaped by years of designing plant-driven landscapes; a space where art and ecology meet through careful observation, instinct, and a willingness to let go. Perched above a working harbour in Marblehead, Massachusetts, the garden unfolds as a layered response to its surroundings. Designed and planted over several years, it reflects my evolving understanding of naturalistic planting and a desire to reconcile the tension between wildness and order in a domestic landscape.

We purchased the property in 2011, but it wasn't until 2019 that the garden began to take shape. I'd spent the intervening years travelling, visiting important gardens and their designers, studying plant communities in the wild and refining a design practice grounded in structure and expressive planting.

Nurseryman Roy Diblik introduced me to the idea of resilient plant communities - gardens that evolve through interaction and time. He pointed me towards Piet Oudolf, whose body of work helped me see planting as a living medium shaped by structure, decay and seasonal change. That led me to Nigel Dunnett, whose time-based strategies and urban plantings revealed how ecology and artistry could thrive in even the most challenging settings.

Later, I studied the research-driven work of Cassian Schmidt at Hermannshof in Germany, and his wife Bettina Jaugstetter's percentage-based planting strategies, which deepened my understanding of layered, low-maintenance plant communities. Then, in 2019, I did some labouring work on Andy Sturgeon's RHS Chelsea Flower Show garden, an experience that gave me a front-row view of how bold structural elements amplify expressive planting.