ANNIE GUILFOYLE

The garden polymath on the pleasures of passing on knowledge, the rewards of close observation and the circuitous route towards grounding her itchy feet

- JODIE JONES

For someone whose life is built around the creation of beautiful gardens, Annie Guilfoyle has remarkably itchy feet. She teaches several prestigious garden design courses in this country, including at West Dean and Great Dixter, but also lectures as far afield as Pennsylvania and Poland.

She is an obsessive Italophile and travels there annually for the Bergamo landscape festival (she’s on the selection committee), to run workshops, and at any other opportunity she gets. She designs gardens up and down the country, and the Garden Masterclass events she runs with garden writer Noel Kingsbury only add to her mileage.

“I have always loved to travel, to go to new places and meet interesting people,” she says. “I grew up on Exmoor in the middle of nowhere, which was very beautiful but isolated. When you start life somewhere like that, you know that you will have to get out and make an effort.”

As a child she treated school as a social club, and all her reports said that she would do well if only she would stop talking so much. Instead, she left before sixth form, and trained as a riding instructor. “Horses were my passion at that stage, even though I had to walk two miles just to ride one. I dreamed of competing at the Badminton Horse Trials, but in my heart I knew it was never going to happen, so after a couple of years I decided to get out and see the world instead.”