Andalusia Garden Symposium

Tom Stuart-Smith

Tom Stuart-Smith is a landscape architect and garden designer whose work combines naturalism with modernity and built forms with romantic planting based on close observation of nature. He read Zoology at the University of Cambridge before completing a postgraduate degree in Landscape Design at Manchester University. Tom has since designed gardens, parks and landscapes throughout the world.

Projects in the public domain include several at Chatsworth, a new public garden at the Hepworth Wakefield, and the masterplan for RHS Garden Bridgewater, which is one of the largest recent garden projects in Europe. At Bridgewater he was also responsible for much of the detailed design of the central area of the garden. In London he has designed Jellicoe Gardens in Kings Cross, a new Islamic garden commissioned by the Aga Khan Development Network and Argent, opened in 2021, and the dramatic recasting of a garden by St Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London with a large water basin at its centre, reflecting Sir Christopher Wren’s famous dome, opened in 2022.

Recently completed projects in the UK include a new garden at Knepp Castle that seeks to maximise biodiversity, and a new landscape to Aldourie Castle on Loch Ness in Scotland.

Current projects include gardens in Gujarat, New York State, Denmark, Spain, Germany and France. In the UK he is making a garden for Tate Britain, supported by the Clore Duffield Foundation and in collaboration with the Royal Horticultural Society which will open in September 2026 and a new garden for the National Centre for Music in the centre of Edinburgh.

Christin Geall

Christin Geall’s work focuses on the intersections of nature, culture, and horticulture. Her first book of photographs and essays, Cultivated: The Elements of Floral Style was published by Princeton Architectural Press. Flora Culture: How Flowers Shape Our World is her new Rizzoli book featuring eight-five essays and over two hundred images from over forty countries. Find her online @cultivatedbychristin.

Julie Moir Messervy

Julie Moir Messervy is Founder and CEO of JMMDS and Home Outside, Inc. An award-winning landscape designer, author, and lecturer, she is an innovative leader in landscape and garden design theory and practice. Her company, Home Outside®, uses cutting-edge technology to bring beautiful, sustainable landscape design to homeowners everywhere.

Her best-known work is the award-winning Toronto Music Garden, a collaboration with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma and the City of Toronto to create a three-acre public park based on the “First Suite for Unaccompanied Cello” by J.S. Bach, which received a Leonardo Da Vinci Award for innovation and creativity.

Messervy is the author of eight landscape design books, including Home Outside: Creating the Landscape You Love that received the Garden Writers Association Gold Medal for Best Book Writing. Other books include The Inward Garden and Contemplative Gardens, named one of the ten best garden books by The New York Times.

She studied landscape design with eminent Japanese garden master Kinsaku Nakane in Kyoto, Japan, first as a Henry Luce Scholar, and then as a Japan Foundation Fellow. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Wellesley College and Master of Architecture and Master in City Planning degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.