Fenella Crichton is a trained art historian who spent twenty years as a critic, writing regular columns for Apollo magazine and Art International. She also contributed to many other magazines and wrote a number of catalogue introductions and essays. She curated The Sculpture Show at the Hayward Gallery and Critic’s Choice at the AIR gallery.

In 2000 she decided to develop her passion for plants on a professional basis and took courses on Practical Gardening, Plants and Planting and Garden Design. Since 2005 she has been working as a garden designer in north London, although she still continues to teach Contemporary Art at Brighton University.

Her style of planting can be described as romantic minimalism. Modernism in her view is still relevant to landscape design but she likes to combine a strong structure with loose drifts of flowers, some of which mingle with each other. Colour, texture and shape in her opinion are what make gardens interesting. A strong point in her work is the use of unusual colour contrasts like maroon, silvery grey and palest yellow or perhaps violet, bluish grey and vivid emerald. She has also designed two gardens comprised only of an extraordinary range of shades and textures of green, punctuated by the odd splash of white.

Strong seccessional planting is another feature of her work and in every scheme she aims to have some plants at their peak throughout the year. This she achieves with a combination of flowering plants and bulbs with shrubs, climbers and unusual small trees. A single distinctive and beautiful tree can often give a whole garden a special character. She is happy to work on any scale but has most experience with small urban gardens. Furthermore she is pleased to offer a free consultation on site.