Meet the designer of the Sue Ryder Grief Kind Garden in the All About Plants category at RHS Chelsea 2024
Katherine Holland
Katherine is a garden designer who combines her passion for strong design and beautiful planting to create bespoke, wildlife-friendly gardens for spaces of all kinds. Having grown up near Marlborough, she now works with clients across Wiltshire, London and surrounding areas.
See the Sue Ryder Grief Kind Garden
As a child, Katherine was constantly in the family garden – and through this, her passion for gardening, and more recently garden design, was born. After working as a financial risk manager Katherine decided to retrain, studying for her garden design diploma at the renowned London College of Garden Design based in Kew Gardens. Katherine gained invaluable experience working for one of the UK’s leading garden designers before launching her own garden design studio.
In 2022, Katherine was awarded a Silver medal at the RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival for the Global Impact garden, A Journey, in collaboration with charity Sue Ryder, a garden she co-designed with her friend Becca Nash.
Katherine says: “This is the garden I am most proud of – it was a conceptual garden based on my own experiences of grief following the death of my Mum. We always shared a love of nature and she taught me everything I know about gardening. She had been encouraging me for years to retrain in garden design and this became more pertinent after her shock diagnosis. However, I did fall out of love with gardening for a time, it felt pointless without her - although I now find it a real source of comfort and connection to her. I really want grief to be talked about more openly, to help normalise the topic and provide support to those who are grieving and those who are close to them. This is something I would like to build upon with the 2024 RHS Chelsea Garden”.
Katherine’s debut garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show was in 2023 where she received a Silver-gilt medal for her balcony garden, The Folio Society’s Reading Room Garden and she is looking forward to returning in 2024.
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