Learning In conversation
An Evening with Monty Don and Tom Stuart-Smith
Join horticulture and garden design legends Monty Don and Tom Stuart-Smith in conversation with Assistant Curator Naomi Zaragoza.
For the first time, Monty Don joins Tom Stuart-Smith for a public conversation encompassing garden design, the lessons learned during their careers, current passions and projects, and the role of gardening and garden design in today’s world.
Monty Don is the UK’s leading garden writer and broadcaster, who has spread his love for gardening on television over a thirty-year career. He is also a prolific writer, with numerous gardening books under his belt, and he recently unveiled his celebrated RHS and BBC Radio 2 Dog Garden at Chelsea Flower Show.
Tom Stuart-Smith is celebrated as one of the UK’s top landscape designers, and has created gardens, parks and landscapes throughout the world for clients including the Royal Horticultural Society, the Royal Academy of Arts, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, and eight award-winning gardens for the Chelsea Flower Show. He is currently developing a garden that will transform the setting of Tate Britain, to be opened in 2026.
Both have redefined horticultural and garden design standards nationally and internationally through their work and share a mutual admiration for one another.
This conversation will be chaired by gardener and Assistant Curator of Public Practice at the Design Museum Naomi Zaragoza. The event will include the opportunity for questions from the audience.
Speakers
Monty Don O.B.E. is the UK’s leading garden writer and broadcaster. He has been making television programmes for over twenty years on a range of topics, spanning travel, craft, outdoor living and, principally, gardening. He has been lead presenter of the BBC’s Gardener’s World since 2003 and since 2011 the programme has come from his own garden, Longmeadow, in Herefordshire. Monty has made acclaimed prime time series on gardens and written numerous books.
Tom is a landscape designer working globally, whose practice is rooted in his experience of gardening at home in Hertfordshire. He has made gardens for Queen Elizabeth II, Chatsworth, the RHS, the Royal Academy, and numerous public gardens. He is currently designing a garden for Tate Britain. In 2024, with his wife Dr Sue Stuart-Smith, he established The Serge Hill Project for Gardening and Health, a not-for-profit engaging local school children with gardening.
Nao is a curator, cultural producer and gardener. As Assistant Curator of Public Practice at the Museum, she has been working on the Growing Together project in the Dame Sylvia Crowe Garden, exploring the intersections of horticulture, design and wellbeing. A trained Horticulturalist, she is currently studying at the British Academy of Garden Design. She previously led the Communities and Cultures Department of Latin American House, a charity supporting immigrants in London.
Adult: £20
Student: £16
Concession: £16
Members*: £15
*Please note that this benefit only applies one individual cardholding Member’s ticket and not those of additional guests.
Do you require BSL interpretation? Please note that your ticket must be purchased at least 1 month before the event to request a BSL interpreter. We won't be able to provide a BSL interpreter if the ticket is purchased less than a month before the event.
Tickets are non-refundable and non-exchangeable. Visit our terms & conditions page for further information.
What's on
Background image: Paola Vivas
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