Head gardener at Eden Nature Garden and Guardian of Whitewebbs Park

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Benny originally trained as a marine biologist but for the last decade has been working as a gardener in London.

He is the head gardener in Eden Nature Garden in London and he also works with Fiona and John Little at their Hilldrop garden in Essex.

He is particularly focused on thoughtful, city gardening with a focus on wild insects, utilising the combination of wild and ornamental plants, whilst maximising breeding space. 

Director at Harris Bugg Studio

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Charlotte (she/they) is a queer designer whose background, work and life are rooted in a sense of fairness, in questioning fixed categories and in exploring the spaces in between. Their philosophy is that binaries are an unhelpful human shorthand, tidy and convenient yet totally untrue -  nature itself moves in spectrums, continuums and blurred edges. 

She holds that life is inherently political, and that choosing not to act is still a choice; one that sustains the status quo.

They are furious about how women are forced to exist in a patriarchal society, and the menopause has only heightened that fury (if that were possible).

She co-founded Harris Bugg Studio with Hugo Bugg in 2017 to create a progressive landscape practice shaped as much by its values as by its design work. The aim has always been not only to make meaningful gardens and landscapes, but also to rethink how a studio can operate; bringing those values into everyday practice. Harris Bugg Studio are now a  team of 15 with a range of projects of all shapes and sizes including private residential, commercial, botanic, health and wellbeing, public and historic.

Horticulturalist, landscape architect, independent environmentalist, naturalist, writer and broadcaster

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Chris Baines grew up in Sheffield, spent a year working for Sheffield City Parks Department and went on to study horticulture and landscape architecture.  He has been a leading champion of wildlife gardening and access to nature for more than 40 years.  He first created a “Rich Habitat Garden” on BBC Gardeners’ World in 1979 and his BBC film Bluetits and Bumblebees first inspired viewers to garden with nature back in 1985 – the year Chris created the first-ever wildlife garden at Chelsea Flower Show.  His best-selling book “How to Make a Wildlife Garden” has never been out of print since then, and the fourth edition, expanded and redesigned, is now published by the RHS as their “Companion to Wildlife Gardening.” 

Chris is an independent environmental adviser to industry and government.  He is a national Vice President of the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts, winner of lifetime achievement medals from both the RSPB and the British Association of Naturalists, Patron of the Wildlife Gardening Forum and an adviser to the National Trust and the National Grid.  He has an honorary doctorate from Sheffield Hallam University.

Chris is an award-winning writer and broadcaster. He was one of the original presenters of BBC Countryfile, his book The Wild Side of Town won the first UK conservation book prize, his Children’s TV series The Ark won the International Wildscreen Award, and his most recent film The Living Thames, made for the Thames Estuary Partnership, has won festival prizes across four continents.

Garden and Landscape Designer and Writer

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DARRYL MOORE is an award-winning garden and landscape designer and writer. He is author of Gardening in a Changing World: Plants People and the Climate Crisis (Pimpernel Press). He is Director and co-founder of the innovative urban landscape organisation Cityscapes, realising creative approaches to greening city spaces through novel design ideas that ensure ecological, economic and social sustainability. He is a consultant at Beth Chatto’s Plants & Gardens, co-curator of thehub.earth and a tutor at KLC School of Design. He sits on the Society of Garden Designers Council, and is an Honorary Fellow of West Dean College and a Fellow of the RSA. His most recent award was for the St Mungo’s Putting Down Roots Garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2022, showcasing sustainability and ecology in public places. He also designed the RHS Chelsea Repurposed Garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2024, using materials from previous show gardens and drought tolerant planting.

Gardening in a Changing World: Plants, People and the Climate Crisis explores recent developments in planting design, horticulture, ecology and plant science. It addresses our relationship with plants and gardens, looking at the ways we can begin to appreciate and work together with plants in facing the challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss. Pimpernel Press, 2022.

Head of Horticulture at the Horniman Museum and Gardens

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Errol Reuben Fernandes is the Head of Horticulture at the Horniman Museum and Gardens in South London and has presented for a broad range of gardening television shows for the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4. He manages a diverse, 16-acre site that includes a grade 2 listed Sunken Garden dating back to the 1930’s, and a Prairie Garden created using North American and South African species, designed in collaboration with Professor James Hitchmough. Errol continues to take the site forward with new, innovative, and sustainable practice at the forefront of what he and his team do. He developed a Micro- Forest of 900 trees, consisting of 35 native and non-native species planted in just 400sq meters in 2022 and a Xerophytic (drought tolerant) display of plants from Mediterranean climatic zones from around the world that have been planted in 15 tonnes of their own crushed building waste.

With a background in fine art, curation and psychotherapy as well as being botanically trained, his approach to landscape management, horticulture and design is creative, contemporary, thoughtful, and sensitive. Errol is particularly interested in ecological and sustainable horticulture that is low in intervention while still creating beautiful immersive spaces that foster greater connection and relationship between people the environment.

Director, design and horticultural lead at Australia based Super Bloom Plant Practice

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Jac Semmler is a plant practitioner and director of Super Bloom plant practice bringing dynamic living beauty, diversity and delight through planting design, high skill horticulture and plant x art projects, with a mission of 'plants for the people' in a changing climate. 
Recognised horticulturist, advocate and innovator in wonderous dry summer planting, based in Australia and working internationally. Author of Super Bloom and The Super Bloom Handbook with Thames and Hudson, published worldwide.
Photo credit: SarahPannell @SarahPannell

Gardener, creator of Grass Roof Company, creator of carenotcapital

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John argues


Put the best gardeners in the poorest places

Move money from capital into care

Understand that gardened places are best for biodiversity and people

Move novel landscapes higher up the BNG metric

Understand that a modern public space gardener is much more than a horticulturist

Keep waste on site and use it to make places beautiful and biodiverse

Put soil and plants on roofs

Gardener and Garden Designer

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Jo McKerr is a gardener, writer and designer based in Somerset. In 2011, she bought a brownfield 2-acre site near Bath and has spent thirteen years transforming it into a progressive wildlife garden. Jo now uses her garden to experiment and teach about low-intervention landscapes with high aesthetics, garden craft, and biodiversity. She cultivates with a gentle hand, nurturing wild plants, reinstating habitat, and stimulating natural processes.

She advocates for…
·      A divestment from ‘instant’ garden towards an evolving enriching one.
·      Growing, gardening and designing with resilience, repurposing and regeneration as central principles.
·      Gardens that awake cultural discourse about land, belonging and humans as part of nature.
·      A questioning of the hierarchies within Horticulture that stifle creativity and progress.
·      A recognition of the craft of the gardener as a unique skillset that is currently undervalued.

Website: jomckerr.com
Instagram: @jo_pratensisgardens

Cultural Gardener at The Hepworth Wakefield

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As Cultural Gardener, Katy has cared for The Hepworth Wakefield Garden in West Yorkshire, UK, since its creation in 2019, together with a small and dedicated team of local volunteers. The Hepworth Wakefield Garden, designed by internationally acclaimed landscape architect Tom Stuart-Smith, is open 24 hours a day and free for all to enjoy. It is a much-needed urban oasis for people local to the gallery. Katy is responsible for the day-to-day management of the planting and liaises with learning and events teams to develop creative activities connected to the garden.

Katy initially studied Fine Art before retraining in horticulture. She has previously worked in beautiful gardens across the UK and in the USA, including Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh at Logan: Dumfries & Galloway, Tresco Abbey: Isles of Scilly and Longwood Gardens: Pennsylvania, USA.

Professor of Planting Design and Urban Horticulture in the Department of Landscape at the University of Sheffield

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Nigel Dunnett is Professor of Planting Design and Urban Horticulture in the Department of Landscape at the University of Sheffield and is one of the world’s leading voices on innovative approaches to planting design.  He is a pioneer of the new ecological and sustainable approaches to gardens, landscapes, and public spaces.  His work revolves around the integration of ecology and horticulture to achieve low-input but high-impact landscapes that are dynamic, diverse, and tuned to nature.  Nigel’s work is based on decades of detailed experimental work, delivering a wide range of innovative approaches to achieving transformational and multifunctional urban greening.  His work has had widespread application in practice: he works as a designer and consultant and regularly collaborates with a wide range of other professions.  Nigel was the first winner of the Landscape Institute Award for Planting Design, Public Horticulture and Strategic Ecology in 2018. In 2020 Nigel was made an Honorary Fellow of the Landscape Institute, and in 2023 an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and appointed as a Royal Designer for Industry.  Nigel’s 2019 book ‘Naturalistic Planting Design: The Essential Guide’ (Filbert Press) is a market leader in the field and won ‘European Garden Book of the Year, 2021.  Nigel’s book with colleague James Hitchmough ‘The Dynamic Landscape: ecology, design and management of urban naturalistic planting’ (2003, new edition coming in 2025) is a classic text. Nigel founded the company ‘Pictorial Meadows’ which is now the UK market leader in ‘Designed Meadows’.  In December 2022 Nigel was named as one of the top three most influential people in the UK landscape Industry.  Projects include: Tower of London Superbloom 2022; The Barbican, Beech Gardens and High Walk (Phase 1 2013, Phase 2 commencing 2026); Grey to Green, Sheffield (2015-2020); Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (co-principal planting design consultant 2008 – 2014 and ongoing); Grosvenor Square, London (implementation 2025-6); Battersea Power Station (2022); Diamond Garden, Kings’ Gallery, Buckingham Palace 2013, Queen Elizabeth Memorial, St. James Park (2025 – ongoing).  Nigel takes a ‘People-First’ approach to bringing sustainable and biodiverse urban greening into the mainstream.  Nigel was appointed as a ‘Royal Designer for Industry’ in 2023, and was named as ‘Responsible Designer of the Year, 2025’ by House and Garden magazine.

Horticulture Innovation Manager at The Green Estate

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Owen is Horticulture Innovation Manager at Pictorial Meadows, part of not-for-profit The Green Estate Community Interest Company, with a mission to grow green and resilient urban places where people and nature thrive. This large social enterprise delivers and maintains meadows and resilience landscaping projects across the UK, provides stewardship of 80+ hectares of Sheffield green space including 5 city parks, and produces biodiverse Pictorial Meadows seed mixes and meadow turf.

With the team, Owen works on the Sheffield Grey to Green Scheme, the Mansfield Sustainable Flood Resilience scheme, biodiverse green roofs and large scale urban meadow projects, plus development of Pictorial Meadows products, services, and consultations. He is particularly interested in how large urban green infrastructure projects are implemented and cared for in perpetuity, and the weighing-up of costs and benefits when creating and nurturing multi-functional landscapes.

After first studying art, he gained a degree and masters in Environmental Science at the University of Sheffield. He then worked on international field research projects studying plant-soil-atmosphere interactions for carbon-negative agriculture. Inspired by the work happening at the nearby Sheffield Department of Landscape, he transitioned into horticulture, gaining broad practical experience before completing the RHS Wisley Diploma; studying there during a time of rapid change in search of more sustainable design and management approaches. He wrote his dissertation on the sustainability of glyphosate vs other weed management approaches.

Outside of work, Owen is a keen gardener with a passion for long-season mixed plantings, and an avid propagator with a passion for seed. He loves visiting nurseries, gardens and landscapes.

Photo courtesy of Alastair Johnstone / Climate Visuals

Plantsman

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I started off as an amateur “plant nerd”, creating the 2-hectare botanical garden Peter Korns Trädgård in Eskilsby east of Gothenburg. My driving force in Eskilsby was to successfully grow the most challenging of plants for a southern Swedish climate; ranging from high alpines to desert plants to near-tropicals. I succeeded in doing this by recreating the conditions of the plants’ original growing sites.

These days I have shifted my focus from challenging species to challenging locations: I like working with sites where I need to find plant material that comes from similar, or worse, growing conditions in the wild. This is needed when planting roof gardens, rain gardens, green walls (check out my collaboration with the company Butong!), as well as many other urban and coastal environments.

Most of my plantings are made in pure sand to create low-maintenance spaces that promote both plant and insect ecology. None of the plantings that I do, apart from the green walls, ever need watering after being established, and the great number of species that I know and use are always adapted to the intended growing site.

In my book Peter Korn’s Garden – Giving Plants What They Want I describe my growing methods in detail for others to learn from.

Director National Wildflower Centre, Chair of Friends of St James’s Garden & UK Urban Ecology Forum

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Richard Scott is Director of the National Wildflower Centre at the Eden Project, delivering creative conservation project work nationally, always with a Liverpool base. He is also Chair of the UK Urban Ecology Forum, He has delivered wildflower landscapes with partners including local authorities and community forests. Richard has developed successful new creative conservation techniques including soil inversion which has delivered startling new habitats across the UK for a selection for grassland, woodland, heathland and dune habitats, which are now extraordinary examples of what can be achieved with the right starting point. This experience was encapsulated in the Award-winning publication Wildflowers Work (1993, 1997 and 2004): a practical guide with detailed specifications for implementing wildflower landscapes.

Chartered Landscape Architect and Garden Designer

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I’m a chartered landscape architect and garden designer and have been working in the north of England for over twenty five years. I am particularly interested in creating regenerative landscapes complemented by a mosaic of planted and structural habitats for people, biodiversity and wildlife. A recent project - a wildlife rain garden - won the Design for the Environment category in the Society of Garden and Landscape Designers awards 2025.


In 2021 I was awarded a Royal Horticultural Society Bursary to study brownfield and gravel gardens. My report, ‘Nature rising from the rubble,’ explored growing plants in aggregates and the potential for wildlife in different gardens and landscapes. It won the 2022 RHS prize for best bursary report and is free to download via the 'Roots and All’ website: https://rootsandall.co.uk/ .

Horticulturalist, Podcast Host, and CEO of Veterans’ Growth charity

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Sarah Wilson is the Chief Executive Officer of Veterans' Growth, a charity dedicated to supporting military veterans through horticultural therapy. Under her leadership, the charity offers therapeutic gardening programs aimed at alleviating conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, providing veterans with new skills and fostering long-term social connections. Beyond her role at Veterans' Growth, Sarah is known for hosting the "Roots and All" podcast, where she shares insights on wildlife gardening and sustainable practices. 

Head of Gardens and Parks at The National Trust

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Having changed career in the early 2000’s, Sheila studied at Kew, worked for English Heritage, and was a garden manager at RHS Garden Wisley with responsibility for Education, Edibles, Seed and Wellbeing from 2015 to 2024. This time included the development of the hilltop gardens at Wisley which feature gardens for Wildlife, Wellbeing and Food. Sheila is passionate about growing food in sustainable ways to support planetary and human health, and was instrumental in developing Wisley’s planet friendly gardening initiative to develop actions towards increasing biodiversity and sharing knowledge around sustainability and resilience in horticulture. Sheila is now Head of Gardens and Parks at the National Trust and carries out a lead role for horticulture across all the National Trust gardens.

Horticulturalist and Garden Designer

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A qualified horticulturalist, designer and landscaper Tracy McQue has run her design studio in rural East Lothian, just outside Edinburgh, for 18 years. She also spent a couple of years building gardens for other designers after previously having 10 years as a software engineer in the semiconductor industry.

In her time as a designer, she has worked on a large variety of projects, in style and scale from a tiny city back garden of 15 sq m to a decade long 180 acre landscape in the Loch Lomond National Park.

In recent years she has been experimenting with planting in to a variety of on-site substrates & materials, working more & more with gravel, sand and crushed concrete. Spending time travelling and observing natural landscapes has become a huge obsession and she’s often found crawling around on her hands & knees staring at a few square metres of planting in the landscape for hours.

Tracy is passionate about education, as well as a thirst for knowledge of new plants & habitats she enthusiastically passes on knowledge where she can. As well as teaching at local colleges she has been a mentor to many students and graduate designers, enjoying the experience of having them on her sites learning about materials, observing how relationships with contractors work and setting out plants.

When she’s not designing or staring at plants and boulders she’s dreaming of her next travel destination (most likely whilst knitting socks).