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Ann-Marie Powell

@ann-mariepowell.bsky.social
433 followers 23 following 111 posts

Warning: Award-winning garden designer & writer with chronic garden obsession syndrome. Side effects include spontaneous plant talk & botanically ambushing every conversation. No known cure sought. 💚🍃🌻

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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 16h
So transfixed by the colour of Gaudí's bench at Park Güell that I almost missed its job: collecting rain and sending it down pipes inside the hall's columns to a cistern. Gaudí drew the curve, Jujol found the colour. Discipline and control, camouflaged in a loud coat.
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
What the International Gardening Set are talking about; planting in the most extreme landscapes, one very deliberate spade purchase and gardeners as keystone species, amongst so much more. loom.ly/v3QA8Hc
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
This summer's drought barely touched our Wildlife Garden at RHS Wisley. Climbers are still finding their way up the sweet chestnut habitat tower, the cosmos is still working for pollinators and none of that colour needed extra water. Designed to keep changing through the year, dry ones included.
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Evening light like this does half the designing for you. This is Jackie Sherling's garden at the point most gardens go quiet for the day, and this one just gets better. I love imagining Jackie and Alan up on their terrace with a glass of something cold, watching it happen.
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Twenty years tending Hampton Court Palace, and Graham Dillamore told AFP: 'We're losing mature tree stock, and that's tragic in a historic garden.' Full AFP piece: www.japantimes.co.jp/environment/20…
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
My lawn's already greening up. Others haven't turned yet, and that's fine, dormant doesn't mean dead. House & Garden asked me and other designers our honest drought recovery tips. Link: www.houseandgarden.co.uk/article/ho…
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
What makes a great garden? Trees, borders, or colour and pollinators? Tony Kirkham, Matthew Pottage and I argue it out at Roots, Shoots & Plot Twists. 2pm, Sunday 13 September, St Andrew's Church, Cobham, Surrey. £10 via @cobhambookshop cobhambooks.com/products/roots-shoots-and-plot-twists
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Late summer's palette deepens in the golden light. All that's been working quietly in the background becomes the whole show. A combo for every month in A Year of Colour. No gaps, no guesswork. Photography: Julie Skelton. UK & Europe: loom.ly/UOwUImk US & Canada: loom.ly/CRxdwuM
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
Shepherd's Cottage, Stoughton, in Sussex Life this week. Full article: www.ann-mariepowell.com/wp-content/…
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
We're in House & Garden this week on gardens that cope with heat. The best cooling tool? A tree. Hard paving is a slow storage heater. Plant loosely, use water strategically. Photo: Julie Skelton. Full piece: www.houseandgarden.co.uk/article/ho…
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
We're hiring a Senior Garden Designer or Landscape Architect to join the studio in Petersfield — a project-leading role with genuine creative ownership. Applications close Friday 24th July. Details: www.ann-mariepowell.com/ampg-is-rec…
ann-mariepowell.com
We're recruiting!
We have an exciting opportunity for a Senior Garden Designer or Landscape Architect to join our team!
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
Penny Walker joined AMPG in May 2022 as a Junior Landscape Architect. Now Landscape Architect, producing construction drawings and planting plans in Vectorworks across key projects. RHS medals at 14 and 15. First Class degree. Masters. 30 Under 30. We don't talk about our team nearly enough.
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
“Every plot should pulse with personality.”Country Living gave my book A Year of Colour an eight-page extract in their August issue. Three border combinations from my own garden. Grab your copy: UK → geni.us/Ayearofcolour US → geni.us/Ayearofcolor
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
Recruiting: Senior Garden Designer / Landscape Architect at AMPG, Petersfield. Project-leading role across private, hospitality, and heritage commissions. Closing 10 July. loom.ly/3qGDyAI
ann-mariepowell.com
We're recruiting!
We have an exciting opportunity for a Senior Garden Designer or Landscape Architect to join our team!
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
A book brimful of plant combinations, photographed by Julie Skelton in my own Hampshire garden. Eighteen months to make. I hope it’s as useful as it was hard to write. UK: geni.us/Ayearofcolour US: geni.us/Ayearofcolor
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 21/06/2026
I visited the Rewilded Walled Garden at Knepp last week. I've seen a lot of gardens. This one genuinely recalibrated something. Honest designer's response, more photos than I've ever included, and a question I still can't fully answer. All love, AMP x loom.ly/vo7nozo
open.substack.com
Knepp’s Walled Garden
Is this rewilding, renaturing, or just very brave gardening?
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
Clare Foggett's new book: Beauty & Abundance: British Cottage Gardens, photography by Jonathan Buckley. Private gardens, rarely seen. Jackie Sherling's Shepherd Cottage, an AMPG project, has a whole chapter. Out now from Quadrille.
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
A walled kitchen garden cultivated since 1906. Four years of design work. Professional aerial photography from Julie Skelton shows the whole thing clearly for the first time. Four elemental quadrants. Curved edimental beds. A reflecting pool. A glasshouse restaurant cooking from it daily.
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
Opening night at Borde Hill's Restaurant Isca. The kitchen garden we redesigned, now feeding a restaurant, One of those UNFORGETTABLE evenings. @bordehillgarden
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
Do you grow flowers or food? Trick question. Edimentals are both. And you’re probably already growing them. open.substack.com/pub/myrealgardens…
open.substack.com
Edimentals: the border plants you didn’t know you could eat
What they add to your garden. How I grew to adore them. And right now, the chefs at Borde Hill are cutting plants from my edimentals scheme for tonight’s menu.
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
The walled garden we designed at Borde Hill is open. Restaurant Isca is now welcoming guests into the glasshouse, surrounded by our biodynamic, edimental planting: every plant edible, every plant ornamental. Four years in the making.
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
Post-Chelsea triage: box moth, roses taking over the fence, dahlias left outside all winter that came back. Why I tie climbing roses horizontally, and the biological control that saved the Buxus. ALL in this week’s My Real Gardens Substack newsletter: loom.ly/S4ss4sE Free section for all.
open.substack.com
My Garden Has Gone Feral
The box moth situation, the dahlia miracle, and why I ordered the same hammock twice.
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
RHS Chelsea 2026. The press called it more of the same rewilding story. On the evidence of Main Avenue, they're wrong. My full review: open.substack.com/pub/myrealgardens…
open.substack.com
RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026: My Very Honest REVIEW
What I saw, what I loved, what I’m still thinking about
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Back from six days at Chelsea — straight to a client’s Esher garden for the first growing-season review since planting in November. Allium ‘Purple Rain’ + Digitalis ‘Goldcrest’ doing exactly what they promised. One of seven areas. More to follow. #GardenDesign #AlliumSeason
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Behind the house, Jackie's garden does something quieter. Camassia leichtlinii 'Alba' drifting through Anemanthele lessoniana, dark Aquilegia for pips of colour, stepping stones under a silver birch. Gardens that look like they've simply happened are the hardest to design.
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
RHS Chelsea 2026: a show in transition. New headline sponsor. Project Giving Back in its final year. AI-designed gardens for the first time. My honest preview is over on the My Real Gardens Substack, link below. loom.ly/fqBLm70
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
Topiary holding the bones, Calycanthus in flower, the view across to the South Downs. One of the joys of social media is watching the gardens we've designed grow on, through the clients generous enough to share them.
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
What's your definition of happiness? Mine? A garden, planted. Central London garden. Difficult access, levels, existing York stone lifted, recut & hand-knapped.Today the plants finally went in. A newly built garden goes from green, to brown then green again. This moment the garden returns at last.
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Meet Lisa Silvestro. Junior Garden Designer at AMPG. Fine Art in Marseille, a degree in Film, years as a videographer and colourist before the pull of plants won. Now she's bringing an artist's eye and a designer's discipline to the studio. We're lucky to have her.
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Walking our Kent site with Mary and Ian Calder of Landform. Plans out, levels checked, details talked through before they become potential challenges. The hundred small decisions that look unimportant on paper and matter hugely on the ground. This one's a biggie! Hugely excited to share progress.
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Fifteen years to breed a tulip. Fourteen years in, it can still get pulled if it doesn't make the grade. That stayed with our Landscape Architect Penny Walker after a specialist bulb day at @rhswisley with JUB Holland last week. 100,000 bulbs in the formal gardens. The scale alone is worth the trip.
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
The Studio Jar. A weekly look at what the AMPG team is trialling in Ann-Marie's garden before it goes on a client's planting plan. This week: bulbs, and why we specify them in layers across the planting year. Read the full studio notes on our website. www.ann-mariepowell.com/the-studio-…
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
Bare earth. Hi-vis. Scaffolding. Every garden starts here. The Cottonmill Spa Garden at Sopwell House, six years on. Still working for guests. Still earning its keep in press features, top ten lists and award pages. loom.ly/3myhZCo
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
Garden designers can't drive past a garden gate. This weekend: Forde Abbey in Dorset. 900 years, 30 acres, still evolving. Green-winged orchids in the meadow (stewardship worth applauding), jawdroppingly prehistoric bog garden planting, a magenta and scarlet tulip combo I adored. fordeabbey.co.uk
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
The Octavia Hill Lecture at The Royal Society last night. Baroness Kathy Willis on the healing power of nature, backed by extraordinary science. When we designed the Octavia Hill Garden at Chelsea 2024, we asked: what would Octavia do? Still asking. Nature is not a luxury. It is infrastructure.
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
Proud to be recognised in the 2026 @SpearsMagazine Gardeners & Landscape Designers Index, ranked Top Recommended for a second consecutive year. Bold. Vibrant. Biodiverse. Always.
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
This week’s plant ident from my garden. Amelanchier, hellebores, erythronium, fritillary, Tulipa ‘Continental’, epimedium, and two narcissus: ‘Bella Estrella’ and ‘Hunter Dawn’, which might be the most fragrant thing in the garden right now. Couldn’t pick any tulips yet, they're too spectacular!
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 04/04/2026
Pushchairs round the fountain, every bench taken. The World Food Garden at RHS Wisley, just as April begins. We designed this alongside the Wildlife Garden at Hilltop. The edibles team have made it brilliantly their own. www.ann-mariepowell.com
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
We designed the Wildlife Garden at RHS Wisley 5 years ago. It's one of those projects you keep going back to. Not to check on it. Just to see what it's become. If you're visiting Wisley this spring, don't miss it. ann-mariepowell.com
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
Sicily then Cornwall. In one week. Wild orchids, a limestone gorge, Roman mosaics, then The Edge from U2 talking about soil at the Eden Project. I was not prepared. Read the full story below: This week's newsletter: myrealgardens.substack.com/p/wild-o…
myrealgardens.substack.com
Wild orchids, Roman mosaics, Greater Flamingos and why The Edge from U2 was talking about soil.
Sicily and Cornwall. In one week. I have A LOT to tell you.
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 12/03/2026
COLOUR. As featured in today's Times. Ann Treneman and I talked why growing what you love is always the answer. My new book A Year of Colour is at the heart of it all. 40 planting combinations, every season, from my own garden. Photographed by the FAB Julie Skelton. geni.us/Ayearofcolour
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
What makes a garden whimsical? Thrilled to be part of this brilliant piece by Helen Cross for Homes & Gardens in the States. No paywall either. www.homesandgardens.com/gardens/whi…
homesandgardens.com
Garden Designers Reveal the Secrets to Creating A Whimsical Yard – For a Dreamy, Low-Maintenance Outdoor Space
Seven designers share ideas to help you create your own whimsical yard that goes above and beyond the ordinary
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
New newsletter. My top ten perennials for summer colour. It nearly broke me but it's done! Read it at open.substack.com/pub/myrealgardens… 💜🧡
open.substack.com
A Summer of Colour Part 3: My Top 10 Perennials
Why they made the cut, why choosing just ten is basically impossible, and the easy combinations that actually work.
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
Some pieces are harder to write than others. This one's called 'Blurred Edges' and it's about my garden, this winter, and what happens when you stop trying to control things. Available to read or listen to on The Garden Collective — free to join, £1 first month. loom.ly/8zXE_IU
scribehound.com
The Garden Collective
Blurred Edges The Garden Collective
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 04/03/2026
Sopwell House named one of the 25 best honeymoon hotels in the world by Glamour. The only UK hotel on the list. We designed the Mews, landscape & gardens for The Club at Cottonmill Spa. A very proud moment. Congrats to the whole Sopwell House team. glamourmagazine.co.uk/gallery/best-honeymoon-hotels
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 28/02/2026
Multiple suppliers. Multiple baskets. Banking app face down. Part 2 of A Summer of Colour is live — the summer bulb order. Not dahlias. The OTHER ones. The varieties nobody mentions and where to actually buy them. All over on the My Real Gardens Substack: loom.ly/fsuEVSw
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Twelve months. Every single one considered throughout the year. This South Downs cottage garden — from frozen topiary in January to rudbeckia borders in August to asters in October. Same garden. Twelve different reasons to be outside. Get more inspiration here: geni.us/Ayearofcolour
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
Those circles? Vectorworks software. Data-rich: size, botanical name, pollinator value. We've built custom libraries from decades of experience. Software can't KNOW plants. That takes years. Bold, vibrant, biodiverse really do take meticulous planning. www.ann-mariepowell.com
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 26/02/2026
Thrilled to be part of the 'Creative Work' feature in this month's Homes & Gardens with our Octavia Hill inspired RHS Chelsea Garden as the full-page lead image. Twice in one week this garden resurfaces - it's perhaps my favourite we've ever built at Chelsea. Beyond heartening it still resonates.
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Ann-Marie Powell @ann-mariepowell.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
Pantone's 2026 colour is an off-white called Cloud Dancer. We respectfully disagree. Our counter-proposal: literally any of these. Bold. Vibrant. Biodiverse. Always. Frankly, we think 2026 is the Year of Colour (no surprise!) - if you were Pantone's CEO, which colour would you choose for 2026?
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