Todd Longstaffe-Gowan

Landscape architect and author Todd Longstaffe-Gowan reveals some of the obscure and eccentric English garden-makers who created some immensely personal and idiosyncratic gardens between the early 17th and early 20th centuries.

The characters include the superstitious antiquary William Stukeley, the animal and bird-loving Lady Read, and the celebrated master of Vauxhall Gardens, Jonathan Tyers, who created one of the gloomiest and most perverse anti-pleasure gardens in Georgian England. Others built miniature mountains, excavated caves, assembled architectural fragments and fossils, and displayed exotic animals. Longstaffe-Gowan says these gardens were a form of autobiography and expressed the singularity of the characters behind them.

Longstaffe-Gowan is a landscape architect with an international practice based in London. He is gardens adviser to Historic Royal Palaces, lecturer at New York University (London), president of the London Gardens Trust, editor of The London Gardener and author of several books including The London Town Garden and The London Square.