Catherine Fitzgerald is a landscape designer based between London and Ireland. She creates private and public gardens both in the town and country, but wherever they are the process is the same: listening carefully to the client and their wishes, and responding to the character of the place, whether it be a tiny urban courtyard, a windy coastal plot or an expansive rural idyll. She aims to create gardens to be lived in, and to inspire delight.
She believes passionately in being sensitive to the surrounding landscape, and being at one with ‘the genius of the place’, as Alexander Pope famously advocated. Her gardens are designed with an eye to the local vernacular and history of a site, and the plants and wildlife found there, always acting with nature rather than against it. Her background in horticulture and love of plants means that the planting is always joyous and interesting.
As well as working on new projects, Catherine has been involved with restoring and advising on historic gardens and breathing new life into existing ones. She has also written on a variety of gardens for publications such as House & Garden, The Garden, Interiors Magazine and The Telegraph, and has lectured on Irish gardens in America.
She often collaborates with the Landscape Architect Mark Lutyens. They share a studio near Paddington in London.