Meet the designer of the Stroke Association’s Garden for Recovery in the Show category at RHS Chelsea 2024
Miria Harris
Miria Harris is a London based critically acclaimed landscape designer. Her work and garden writing has appeared in notable books and magazines including House & Garden, Elle Decoration, Garden’s Illustrated, Rakes Progress, The Garden and Bloom. She was featured in House & Garden’s emerging designers list in 2023 and is a professional member of The Society of Garden Designers.
With collaboration at the heart of Miria’s creative process, she works closely with her clients, architects, artisans, fabricators and suppliers to seek out new and inventive ways to bring her designs to life.
Ever conscious of making new things in a world where we produce and consume so much, she advocates for organic principles and looks to integrate and implement a circular ethos into her designs – often favouring moving or reusing materials and plants with integrity and character. Miria prioritises making sensitive low environmental impact choices ensuring that hidden infrastructure is sufficiently robust to future-proof the gardens and landscapes that she sets out to make.
Miria Harris’s studio is based in London where she works with a team to design and implement a wide range of landscape projects across the UK and abroad. Her work ranges from contemporary reimagining of historical gardens for listed buildings, to family and wildlife friendly gardens in urban and rural settings and large-scale public planting schemes. She has worked with a number of celebrated architects and interior designers including Ilse Crawford, Julian Harrap, Sergison Bates and Surman Weston.
In the design and delivery of the Stroke Association’s Garden for Recovery, Miria will collaborate with emerging furniture designer Olivia Gonsalves. Olivia’s practice is centred around multi-sensorial design and simple rituals. Her work is cognisant of the need for responsible design and sparing in materials used.
Miria says: “Some of my earliest memories are of growing plants and as a teenager I wanted to be a landscape architect. However, as a young adult in the city with not much direct access to green space it was hard to imagine a career in horticulture. Collaborating with landscape architects in my former role as a public art curator and then finally having a small garden of my own spurred me on to return to my early ambition and to retrain in Landscape design.
“Project Giving Back has enabled me to combine my passion for designing gardens and landscapes with the opportunity to help raise the profile of the Stroke Association and the work they do, a charity that as a stroke survivor myself, is very personal to me.”
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