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Cultivating Place: Slow Design, Thoughtful Places, Andrew Fisher Tomlin

All photos are courtesy of Andrew Fisher Tomlin, all rights reserved.
All photos are courtesy of Andrew Fisher Tomlin, all rights reserved. 

Planting design is an essential skill in garden design writ large, for the health and beauty of a site– functionally, environmentally, and psychologically.

Andrew Fisher Tomlin is widely acknowledged as leading the development of a distinct professional career path in planting design through his own work and as a Director of Environmental Design at the London College of Garden Design in London and Melbourne, where he has mentored some of the most exciting new designers coming out of the UK and Australia over the past 20 years. 

His work bridges design, education, and industry, and he is especially known for his planting design skills and experience on outstanding landscapes over his 30-year career.

All photos are courtesy of Andrew Fisher Tomlin, all rights reserved.
All photos are courtesy of Andrew Fisher Tomlin, all rights reserved. 

A synthesis of his understanding and teaching about planting design to date, Andrew’s new book, “The Modern Professional Planting Designer,” was published by Rizzoli, New York, in September of 2025.

In March of this year, Andrew received the Royal Horticultural Society’s highest honour, the RHS Elizabeth Medal of Honour, an award conferred on "those of any nationality who have significantly impacted the advancement of the science, art, or practice of horticulture for the benefit of all generations and the environment.”

Andrew joins Cultivating Place this week to share more. Listen in!

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Jennifer Jewell is the creator and host of the national award-winning, weekly public radio program and podcast, Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History & the Human Impulse to Garden, Jennifer Jewell is a gardener, garden writer, and gardening educator and advocate. Particularly interested in the intersections between gardens, the native plant environments around them, and human culture, she is the daughter of garden and floral designing mother and a wildlife biologist father.
Matt Fidler is a producer and sound designer with over 15 years’ experience producing nationally distributed public radio programs. He has worked for shows such as Freakonomics Radio, Selected Shorts, Studio 360, The New Yorker Radio Hour and The Takeaway. In 2017, Matt launched the language podcast Very Bad Words, hitting the #28 spot in the iTunes podcast charts.