Graduate Gardeners Celebrates 50 Years of Award-Winning Landscape Excellence

Accredited Contractors, Graduate Gardeners have earned an enviable reputation as a leading landscape design and build company over the past 50 years.

In that time it’s created thousands of special gardens for customers, who include peers of the realm, TV presenters and musicians; been involved with Gold Medal-winning designs at RHS Chelsea Flower Show and the RHS Malvern Spring Festival and won no fewer than 52 awards from the British Association of Landscape Industries (BALI), including the coveted ‘Grand Award’ in 2021.

Yet, as founder Philip Howard explains, there was a time, albeit briefly, when the Cotswolds-based company might have been known by another name.

“I’m an Oxford graduate and taught geography in schools for nine years before deciding to give it up to study horticulture and start a landscape gardening business, something that raised a few eyebrows back then,”

he explains.

“We came up with the company’s name during a supper with friends: the first suggestion was PG Gardening Tips, based on my first two initials, but this would possibly have led to legal action from the famous tea company, but then somebody put forward Graduate Gardeners, because at that time not many chaps who were graduates went on to become gardeners. The film The Graduate had come out about six years earlier and the name idea was possibly a jokey reference to that too.”

Philip’s passion for designing and building gardens dates back to his childhood, when his family moved from Berkshire to an old mill surrounded by a wilderness in Slad and in 1973, at 33, he undertook a year’s horticultural course at Merrist Wood College before setting up his business.

“I used to cut the grass with a sickle when I was seven and I went on to build walls and things like that. I could have left school and tried to go into business at 19, but my mother pushed me to go into higher education.

“I was enjoying teaching but had this passion for designing and building gardens.

“I took quite a risk in stopping a steady job and changing direction; I had just got married to Judy and back then landscaping people’s gardens wasn’t really in the culture at all.”

Philip’s first two contracts came from acquaintances, after which he had to rely on business generated from his advert in the Yellow Pages, joining just four other companies across Gloucestershire that offered landscaping services.

By that time he’d moved to Bisley and initially worked from a Bedford Luton van he’d bought on hire purchase.

“There was just enough interest to really start building the business up. I started out with a friend from Merrist Wood and when he left I took on more students and employed many local people.

 “In 1977 I purchased the vegetable garden belonging to The Bear Inn in Bisley, which was a complete mess with a dilapidated stone wall,  and used the barn there as my first proper storage building. We rebuilt the stone wall and it’s still there.

“By 1983 we had outgrown the site and took on a field in Calfway Lane, where the business is still based, undertaking almost all the building work ourselves.”

Philip was very much a hands-on boss for the first 10 years, using his teaching skills to pass on knowledge and practical know-how.

“Until I employed 13 people, I was out on site every day and getting the work in during the weekends and evenings. In addition I gave talks to gardening clubs in different villages for a few years. Fortunately, with just a few exceptions, I remained healthy and fit.

“Along with gardens, we did tennis courts and swimming pools for a period of time, along with Tarmac drives.

“Typically I’d go out and see customers, sketch ideas and, if acceptable, I’d do a physical survey.

“I was a stickler for quality; if something wasn’t good enough it would have to be done again.”

Graduate Gardeners had been in business for eight years when it was engaged by Highfields Garden Centre in Whitminster to build a show garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, marking the start of a successful collaboration that continued for around 15 years.

“We won Silver Gilt Medals for the first two gardens and for the third we worked with the designer Julian Dowle and we got our first Gold. We won six altogether and this was a good thing to put in our literature.”

Retirement beckoned during the early 2000s and Philip sold Graduate Gardeners to Charles Price, who has continued to uphold his predecessor’s commitment to excellence. During the handover period the company hit the headlines when 16 employees produced a cheeky ‘naked’ calendar to raise thousands of pounds for the Cotswold Care Hospice.

In recent years Graduate Gardeners has been awarded eight RHS Gold Medals at the RHS Malvern Spring Festival and added a further 37 awards to the collection of prestigious accolades from BALI. Currently the company employs 42 people.

Graduate Gardeners started at a time when only the grandest houses employed others to landscape their grounds.

Now in his eighties and still gardening, to the delight of many people who visit his Bisley home during NGS (National Garden Scheme) open days, Philip is modest about his role in the development of the garden design and build industry.

“When I started I suppose I was naïve in a way, nevertheless I’m an optimist by nature and was lucky to have an understanding wife, a relaxed bank manager and a great bunch of employees.

“There were some stressful times, not least during the late eighties and early nineties when the bank rates were very high, however, things eased off.

“I think Graduate Gardeners was established at a time when there was a change in culture and an increase in the standard of living for a proportion of the population, along with an influx of incomers with a bit of spare cash. Later on, garden design became a popular subject for TV programmes.

“One of Graduate Gardeners’ strengths was that we weren’t really bothered so much about fashion, more about designs that would suit a particular environment, such as the steeply sided valleys found in the Cotswolds.

“After 50 years it’s gratifying the company is still here, keeping busy and picking up awards, and that many of its people have been there for a long time.”

For Charles, now into his 23rd year at the helm of Graduate Gardeners, leading the company is a little like looking after a stately home.

“We’ve certainly held the roof on and kept the door wide open, always embracing new technology, materials, and sustainable building practices, with the latest in 3D CAD design, while retaining our core values of quality, practicality and beauty in our finish,”

he says.

“The next 50 years in horticulture will present new challenges, with many of those who have already spent 20 or more years building the company ready to lead the charge.”