ANTHONY NOEL

My first experience of gardening was in my grandmother's cottage in Devonshire at the age of four. When I was nine my mother took me to Sissinghurst where I met Vita Sackville-West. At fifteen I was taken on a tour of Cotswold Gardens where I was entranced by Lawrence Johnstone's garden at Hidcote Manor, with its stylish French influences... After two years of art school at 18, I undertook a course in decorative arts at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. I then trained for the stage at the Guildford School of Acting. A couple of years spent understudying and being involved in set dressing and props at the Criterion and other west end theatres, made me realise that gardens could be theatrical too!