British garden designer Jo Thompson swears that this year will be her last RHS Chelsea Flower Show. “I keep saying this to everybody–absolutely, this is the last one,” she laughs. With nine main avenue Chelsea show gardens under her belt and medals galore (including five gold medals and the coveted People’s Choice Award at the first RHS Chatsworth Show), Thompson wouldn’t be faulted if she were to make good on her word. 

Known for her beautiful and atmospheric gardens, Thompson is one of the most celebrated garden designers and plantswomen working today. Her work for private clients takes her all over the U.K. to Europe and across the ocean, from New York to Brazil. In addition to her next show garden, Thompson is currently at work on landscapes for Corpus Christi College, RHS Rosemoor, and the garden and arboretum at Saling Hall created by the wine writer Hugh Johnson. Dozens of her private commissions are on display in her recently-published book The New Romantic Garden.

Thompson’s gardens are not only significant for their beauty, but for being sustainably-minded in a serious but unfussy way: Thompson uses organic methods, local materials, and favors biodiverse, climate-adapted plants, but she isn’t a purist about native plants–and as she told us in her Quick Takes below, she believes every garden needs a rose. 

In 2021, Thompson started what was arguably the first garden Substack, The Gardening Mind. Thompson has grown it to be so much more than a newsletter–with online classes, webinars, and group chats, and in-person events (some of her readers even volunteer to help install her show gardens!). Below Thompson takes us into her own gardening mind:

Your first garden memory:

One afternoon the old lady across the road invited me and my mother into her garden. I wandered around the narrow paths through what seemed like thousands of mounds and bumps dotted with millions of tiny groups of plants. In my child’s mind, this was a fairy garden. It was a place of magic and a place that was slightly crazy yet which had every right to exist. Looking back now with experience and hindsight, after a half-century’s stepping along in the world, I understand that this never-ending fairy garden was actually a gravel garden with groups of tiny drought-loving plants cut through by curving paths, which travelled around the garden. 

Garden-related book you return to time and again:

The Making of an English Country Garden by Deborah Kellaway. It isn’t in print any longer, but it truly is a wonderful book: simple, genuine, a good read, and inspiring at the same time. I’d urge you to try to find a copy, if you can. Deborah’s garden writing has you feeling that you’re reading a novel; it reminds me of when I first read Nigella Lawson’s How To Eat, with its seductive combination of tales and knowledge all wrapped up in one book. There are ‘before,’ ‘during,’ and ‘after’ maps (don’t you just love a book with a sketched map?), plant lists and experiments, and discussions about roses—all written in a totally engaging way. Deborah describes her plants with the tenderness and affection of a mother nurturing sometimes wayward children: always modest, ready to admit failures, but optimistic, too. It was the first gardening book I was given when I embarked upon that garden project, which turned into my whole career; so, maybe it’s even life-changing.

Instagram account that inspires you:

These days I use Substack rather than Instagram. India Knight’s ‘Home’ inspires me because of its intelligent, engaging, and sheer joy-bringing content. 

Describe three words your garden aesthetic:

Inevitable, romantic, gentle.

Plant that makes you swoon:

Fritillaria meleagris. The delicate elegance of this early spring bulb, with its chequerboard markings, never fails to intrigue me. I am obsessed with this little beauty, and I have to take its portrait every single day from the moment it’s in bud, through to its last hurrah. Exquisite. It’s beautiful in the patch of long grass where it’s growing in my garden, and just as beautiful in a container with ferns.

Plant that makes you want to run the other way:

It depends which country I’m in. In the UK, it would be Phormium and bamboo. I can’t bring myself to use these plants, which feel so out of place here, but in their natural habitat, they can look extraordinary.

Favorite go-to plant: