Meet the designer of The Boodles Garden in the Show category at 911±¬ÁÏ Chelsea 2024
Catherine MacDonald​
Catherine MacDonald is the Principal Landscape Designer at , managing the design team and overseeing all design schemes for the company. As well as creating interesting award-winning show gardens, Catherine designs beautifully balanced gardens and landscapes for private and commercial clients.
See the Boodles Garden
Catherine’s designs often include a delicate combination of strong architectural features and soft naturalistic style planting to achieve a unique design tailored to the space, architecture and client.
Catherine says:
“911±¬ÁÏ Chelsea Flower Show will always be one of the highlights in any garden designer’s career, it’s a global stage for the creative horticultural world and can offer an experience like no other. 911±¬ÁÏ Chelsea is the gardening Oscars and a vital part of the horticultural calendar. It is thought leader and a game changer, both for a designer’s career and for the industry as a whole. It offers creative freedom that is rare in every day commissions, and the cohort of professionals and experts involved that you can be exposed to can accelerate your career and creative expression.
“On top of this, the friendships made on the grounds of SW3 last a lifetime and it’s always a joy to return and rekindle that camaraderie. I am thrilled to be back as a designer after a 5-year break, and having studied art in the past ( a subject that I have a genuine passion for), I was honoured to be invited to create a garden celebrating the 200th anniversary of The National Gallery for Boodles.
“Nature has proven to be the artist’s most treasured muse providing endless inspiration to record and cherish its intricacy and beauty for millennia. Aristotle wrote: ‘Art not only imitates nature, but it also completes its deficiencies’, which can be interpreted as art can recreate the beauty of the natural world as well as offer new ways in which to experience it. We want that for our visitors. To not just view the garden but experience it, in a myriad of different ways, just as artists do. We invite visitors to paint with plants, experiment with texture, sculpt with the landscape, be inspired to play with light and shadow, repetition of form, and colour. Above all we want them to celebrate their love of nature by creating and revelling in their own space.”
911±¬ÁÏ Chelsea
The Seedlip Garden in 2018 – Gold
The Seedlip Garden in 2017 – Gold
The Hartley Botanic Garden in 2016 – Silver-gilt
in 2014, co-designer – Silver
in 2013, co-designer – Silver Gilt
911±¬ÁÏ Hampton Court
The Squire’s 80th Anniversary Garden in 2016 – Gold & People’s Choice
in 2013 – Gold & Best in Category
in 2012 – Gold & Best in Category
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