As a teenager I already knew it would be important to expand my horizons and, in turn, the way that I saw the world. As a student studying horticulture, it was my ambition to see the über-meadows of the Valley of Flowers in Northern India. It was an adventure to travel into the Himalaya and the valley was unlike anything I had ever experienced in terms of magnitude. Whilst standing in the midst of cypripedium orchids, persicaria and potentilla that lapped the mountains soaring above me into the clouds, I had an epiphany. That I wanted to garden with the freedom of these wild plant communities. To do it at scale and for the plantings to feel as if they had grown out of the place, were in tune and felt right there. 

A decade later, I was drawn to Japan to witness a culture of garden-making that drew from nature, but in an altogether more stylised and formal manner. I was moved first by the culture of animism and then, as the differences fell into place, the exquisite soft minimalism that was employed to emulate a wild place and distil a moment. This was the first time I had encountered the feeling of being taken somewhere very particular by a designed space, where every detail spoke to the next and where images were conjured and composed. A dry waterfall of rocks summoning the energy of a choppy watercourse, the dynamism of the imagined water moving clearly in the mind. The best Japanese gardens have soul. The spirit to take you somewhere, to fine tune your senses and put you in the here and now.