Who's who

As one of the cognoscenti of the gardening world Richard Sneesby’s got a lot to offer. A bestseller and two successful television series behind him, celebrity gardeners and top people at the Royal Horticultural Society amongst his friends, the accolade of an award-winning Chelsea Flower Show garden to his name… and a unique, groundbreaking garden design course at University College Famouth. Welcome to Garden Design 21st-century style.

“Prior to Falmouth I was teaching landscape and garden design within a school of geography, but had always wanted to do it within a school of art,” he recalls. “It was whilst teaching at the Chelsea Physic Garden that I got really switched on to garden design as opposed to landscape architecture and from there I was asked to do a show garden at the Chelsea Flower Show for the Prince’s Trust.”

For Richard, who has always been interested in challenging concepts and pushing boundaries, his aim for the garden design course at Falmouth was clear. “Although students do spend time at Duchy College learning about plant science, this isn’t a horticultural course – I wanted to move away from that approach,” Richard explains. “In launching the garden design course at Falmouth I wanted to produce a different kind of graduate so that we might start to interpret the notion of ‘the garden’ in a different way.”

Part of that reinterpretation is looking at public space as a garden, something that Richard is keen to focus on. “Gardens aren’t just about plants, they are about people and how they interact with their surroundings, particularly in the municipal context,” he continues, “so students on the garden design course work on a variety of public space projects throughout the course to learn about the role people play in defining what a garden needs to do.”

The community-based work that the garden design course includes not only benefits the students, but also the local towns and facilities, from the ‘Liveability’ schemes in Redruth and Camborne, where students design public spaces to help regenerate areas of the towns, to working closely with primary schools to connect their grounds with enhanced opportunities for learning, play and social development.

So this innivative design course goes much deeper than just the garden styling and makeovers that we see every day on TV, although Richard is the first to admit the importance of the media in the growing popularity of garden design. “Fifteen years ago gardening on television was serious, all Gardener’s World and Percy Thrower, but then the lifestyle thing kicked in and it became more interesting – the sort of thing that engaged 18-year-olds, to the extent that now I think 50% of our students on the garden design course are coming to us as a result of it.”

Once on the garden design course, however, students are encouraged to look outside the gardening world
for their inspiration – something that Falmouth offers a lot of. “There is nowhere else in the country where you can study garden design and look over your shoulder to find someone working with ceramics or in textile design,” he explains. “There are links there that can be drawn out, that might take them somewhere previously unexplored, and that’s really exciting.”

Despite having turned his hand to teaching for the last 15 years, design is still at the heart of what Richard does. “It’s important for me to practise as well as teach. I am planning a new book and am in discussions about further television work,” he shares. “I always want to balance my teaching with garden design practice. Garden design is a fast changing industry and I need to be able to filter developments down to my students, as successful students and a successful course go hand in hand.”