New Nordic Gardens

We are delighted to be welcoming Annika Zetterman, author of the best-selling New Nordic Gardens to our webinar series this season. We asked Annika about her career in gardens.

When did you get your first garden or landscape moment, when you knew you wanted to become part of the industry?

It was something that gradually grew on me. At a young age, my grand mother, who was from Estonia, had the greenest fingers one can imagine, and I have found memories spending the days on the farm with her. Later, I was working with floristy, and remember thinking how sad it was that the bouquets I created didn’t last for a lifetime, but only for a few weeks. Later in life, as a trained engineer, I started to pay attention to structural elements and the beatuy of hard landscaping. When I finally decided to retrain as a garden designer, I was fortunate to live with an architect, also a student, and we spent hours discussing, observing and reflecting on both buildings and landscapes.

What’s the biggest challenge we’re facing now from our industry perspective (nationally or internationally)?

Replanting and reforesting, on both a small and large scale. We need to be much stronger advocates for wildlife, and hence see every planting plan, wether public or pivate, not to be created for a property developer or to match a trendy look, but as a highly important document – a health plan – how to help cooling that planet, stabilising soils and bring back important balances, which are destroyed. Short term goals and short term trends, needs to be redically reviewed, for long lasting inprints, in the same way many other industries work today, the “buy-throw away” systems and culture has to change.

Who inspires you in landscape in the Nordic countries today?

In relation to the question above, mother nature. There is so much beauty around, and cultural plants to be cared for. But sad to say, also many invasive plants and diseases occuring, never seen before.

Annika will be speaking on Tuesday 18th October at 5pm. Tickets are just £8, proceeds to 6 charities. You can buy tickets from our Short Courses page.