Whether the commission is a cubistic backyard for fashion model Cara Delevingne or an Islam-infused botanical oasis the size of a small country, Charlotte Harris and Hugo Bugg have one goal: to make the best garden possible. “Our approach to landscape is very much about immersing ourselves in the spirit of the place,” says Harris, one half of London’s Harris Bugg Studio, a two-year-old partnership between the RHS Chelsea Flower Show gold medalists.
Harris’s gold-medal Canadian-natives garden for the 2017 RHS Chelsea Flower Show.
“Not just how it feels when we’re standing in it but being aware of the site’s history, geology, vernacular, and plantings as well as the stories of the people who have inhabited that space for thousands of years.” Their two-acre public garden for the RHS Garden Bridgewater, near Manchester, England—currently under way and part of a 154-acre series of interconnected gardens master-planned by British landscape star Tom Stuart-Smith that will open in 2020—speaks of the city’s industrial heritage. Thus, the scheme is an abstracted plan of the area’s canal network, layered within a long-ago duke’s 19th-century kitchen garden. But it’s more than just pretty.
A Jordanian forest inspired Bugg’s award-winning 2016 Chelsea installation.
“People must be able to take ideas home,” Bugg continues, to be inspired by everything from scented plantings to edible forestry, one of the most ancient forms of agriculture. Delevingne’s London plot, aon the other hand, is tucked behind the model’s Georgian townhouse (AD, May 2018) and centered on what Bugg describes as “a modern parterre” composed of “large lumps of triangular topiary,” all reflected by a black-glass studio structure. “It’s always a challenge in London to create a space that is very crisp yet very inviting and sensual,” he adds. Bugg explains that the point is not just “a beautiful garden but one that expands our skills and knowledge.” Chimes in Harris with a grin, “We like tearing things apart to make them better.” harrisbuggom
