Graduate Success
Here's a selection of past students and what they have gone on to achieve.
RHS Malvern Spring Show 2025
Congratulations to graduate Emily Crowley-Wroe on her Silver Medal winning show garden 'Maindee Unlimited: Greening Maindee Gateway Garden' at the RHS Malvern Spring Show 2025.
Images with thanks to the RHS
This garden, which was co-created with the community-led charity Maindee Unlimited and their volunteer gardening team Greening Maindee, will transform a prominent neglected and unloved site at a major arterial route and road junction into a beautiful gateway garden for the neighbourhood centre of Maindee, Newport.
Image with thanks to Andy O’Rourke
Image with thanks to Emily Crowley-Wroe
Andrea Fearon. One Year Professional Garden Design Graduate
" Since I graduated last year, I was lucky enough to be asked to design a Tudor style garden for Shaw House in Newbury - the grade I listed mansion owned by West Berkshire Council which houses their registry office amongst other functions. It’s been an amazing experience and has just opened to the public. Some of my peers from the 2023/24 course have been along to help me with planning, setting out and planting too."
Society of Garden Designers 2024 awards
Graduate and RHS medal winner Emily Crowley-Wroe won the prestigious SGD Fresh Designer Landscapes and Gardens Award 2024 for her Modern Cottage Garden.
The judges said about the design …
'A cleverly laid out space that has led to a dramatic transformation and the creation of a very welcoming garden. A bold, seductive design.'
Katy Brown. One Year Professional Garden Design Graduate
Graduate and RHS medal winner Emily Crowley-Wroe has been shortlisted in the Society of Garden Designers 2024 awards for her Modern Cottage Garden. Emily's garden balances formal and informal design elements to marry the garden to its contemporary style extension and rural surroundings. The one acre plot is divided into three zones: a contemporary formal area closest to the house and a ‘wilder’ meadow maze area with a parking and guest building area that links the two spaces.
We wish Emily all the best at the awards ceremony in February 2024.
Graduate Steve Williams talk at The Newt Inn, Somerset for their Head Gardener Conference 2023 with business partner Jon Davies
RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2023
One Year Professional Garden Design graduate and lecturer Steve Williams along with Jon Davies (both of @Wildcitystudio) were awarded a Silver Medal for the 'Centre for Mental Health's The Balance Garden' which they designed in collaboration with @centreformh at RHS Chelsea in 2023.
This garden celebrates the potential for genuine nature connection within the urban canvas, reimagining our public parks and often neglected spaces. The urban community garden will celebrate the relationship between nature and our social and mental health, creating new communities to come together and steward our urban futures.
Steve told us: "It was at Hampton Court 2017 where myself and Jon Davies met. Jon won 'Best garden for a changing world' that year for his urban food forest and I was helping Martyn Wilson on his garden 'Brownfield metamorphosis'. Martyn was also a graduate from The Cotswold Gardening School and was very generous to let me be so involved with the build process. It was a great experience which opened loads of doors for me, this all stemmed from my time at The Cotswold Gardening School who I am always grateful to".
Images with thanks to @spencercollection
RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2023 preview in the May issue of the Garden Design Journal, featuring One Year Professional Garden Design Graduates Steve Williams and Martyn Wilson
RHS Malvern Spring Show 2023
Congratulations to One Year Professional Garden Design graduate Emily Crowley-Wroe on her Silver-Gilt Medal winning show garden at the RHS Malvern Spring Show 2023. This is Emily's second time showcasing her design skills at the Spring Show. Emily's 'HomeAway garden' was inspired by holidays to North- West Brittany and reimagined a neglected garden nestled amongst stone cottages and barns.
Images with thanks to @spencercollection
Rebecca Ketley graduated from our One Year Professional Garden Design Diploma course in 2019 and has gone on to establish her own garden design business, Margarita Garden Design. Read about Rebecca's journey in the August 2022 edition of Good Housekeeping and find out more at margaritagardendesign.com
RHS Malvern Spring Show 2022
Emily Crowley-Wroe graduated from The Cotswold Gardening School in 2019. She was awarded a Silver-Gilt medal and Best In Show for her design 'The Hide Garden' in 2022. The garden is inspired by Greystones Nature Reserve in Bourton-on-the-Water and is a personal sanctuary for work and rest.
One Year Professional Garden Design Graduate Rhodri Wilson was awarded a Bronze medal for his first show garden at the RHS Malvern Spring Show 2022. 'Home and Garden' was designed for a couple returning from their travels to their home sanctuary.
Photos by @fionawalshlandscapes www.fionawalshlandscapes.com
Steve Williams- Tutor and Graduate of The Cotswold Gardening School
BBC's 'Your Garden Made Perfect'
Steve Williams-
"When I was approached to be on the recent series of Your garden Made Perfect I had to think hard about whether it was the right move for what I've been aiming to do with my business but as soon as I signed up the whole experience was really enjoyable, although very intense at times! It was great to see behind the scenes of TV garden shows, there is a lot that goes into them and takes an enormous amount of passion and drive from everyone involved to get the results. This was an amazing opportunity to get my ethos to a massive audience and the response has been beyond what I imagined and has been fantastic to hear from so many people who were inspired and have started to look at their gardens differently not only for environmental reasons but also our connection to nature. The design process for this program is incredibly pressured and you need to come up with two great designs in a relatively short amount of time. It is absolutely down to my training at the Cotswold gardening school and the fantastic design process they teach that allowed me to achieve this with results I was really proud to showcase on primetime TV!"
RHS Tatton Park and Blenheim Palace Flower Shows 2018
Graduate Briony Doubleday worked on the UK Pavilion Beijing Expo garden in China in 2019, a project led by the Department for International Trade (DIT) in partnership with the British Embassy in Beijing. Focusing on key natural resources in the UK such as the ancient woodlands and biodiverse meadows.
In 2018 'The Penumbra' - Briony's show garden designed to support the Stroke Association was awarded RHS Gold, 'Best Back to Back Garden', 'Best Construction' and 'People's Choice' Awards at RHS Flower Show Tatton Park and was featured on the BBC RHS Tatton programme with Adam Frost. A simplified version of 'The Penumbra' also won Gold and 'Best in Show' at Blenheim Palace Flower Show.
BBC Gardeners World Live, Hampton Court and RHS Malvern Spring Show
Martyn Wilson graduated from the One Year Professional Garden design Diploma course in 2014 and has gone on to win a string of RHS medals including Silver at The Malvern Spring Festival in 2014, Silver-gilt at the Malvern Spring Festival in 2015, People's Choice Award and Bronze medal at the Malvern Spring Festival 2016, Gold at the Hampton Court RHS show 2017 and Gold at the RHS Spring Festival 2018. Martyn was was featured on BBC Gardeners’ World Live, winning a Gold medal in 2018 and Silver in 2019.
RHS Malvern Spring Show 2019
2018 graduate Julie Bellingham won a Silver medal for her 'Redshift Garden', celebrating how telescopes have helped us develop an understanding of our universe. Plants moving from yellows through to oranges and reds will represent the astronomical Red Shift – or the fact that when observed, galaxies that are moving away from us appear more red.
Gary Bristow also graduated form the One Year Professional Garden Design Diploma course in 2018 and was awarded a Silver-Gilt medal for his 'Macmillan Legacy Garden' at the Malvern Spring Show in 2019.The garden was designed to communicate the importance of gifts left in wills to Macmillan Cancer Support.
Jessica Makins - also a 2018 graduate - was awarded a Gold medal at the 2019 RHS Malvern Spring Festival for her 'An Artist's Studio at Home' show garden in the Green Living category. The design utilised natural materials inside and out, to provide a space to imagine, make and exhibit.
RHS Flower Show Tatton Park 2019
Nicholas Leitch and Pam Duffell graduated from the One Year Professional Garden Design Diploma course at the beginning of July 2019, Just two weeks later they won a Silver-Gilt medal for their 'Trail of Thoughts' garden which was designed to raise awareness of dementia..
RHS Malvern Spring Festival 2018
Graduate Andy designed and created a show garden at the 2018 RHS Malvern Spring Festival. The garden won a RHS Silver-Gilt medal and People's Choice and was featured on BBC Gardener's World presented by Adam Frost. The garden featured artwork by Bristol based artist and printmaker, Steph Renshaw.
Society of Garden Design Awards 2017
Steve Williams graduated as top student from the One Year Professional Garden Design Diploma course in 2017 and went on to be short-listed for two coveted Society of Garden Designers’ awards.
RHS Malvern Spring Festival 2015
Kate Durr graduated from the One Year Professional Garden Design Diploma in 2014. The following year she won a gold medal and the Best Festival Garden award at the RHS Malvern Spring Festival for her ‘Constraining Nature’ garden. Kate has gone on to be creative director at Highgrove House, the country estate of HRH The Prince of Wales.
