My Chelsea Peter Dowle

Peter Dowle

Landscape contractor

Peter has a long history of building gardens at Chelsea, which has been part of his life since he first came at the age of 9 or 10 with his father, the distinguished garden designer Julian Dowle. We caught up with him to find out what he’s up to this year.

Royal Horticultural Society So, you always build rather than design?

Peter Dowle Although our business does do garden design, we seem to have carved a niche at Chelsea with designers coming to us to pick up, plant procure, build and project manage their gardens.

RHS How many gardens are you doing this year?

PD Two show gardens, Kebony - Naturally Norway designed by Darren Saines and the L’Occitane Garden by James Towillis.

RHS What’s the advantage of being the landscape contractor?

PD Every garden brings different challenges and new experiences. It’s also a great opportunity to work with gardens from outside the UK. A couple of years ago we did lots of research into Chinese plant material to use for Shao Fan’s ‘Seeking Garden’, likewise the gardens we are doing this year are both from overseas so require extra investigation. In 1995 for the ‘Honda Tea Garden’ I travelled to Japan for research – so that was dream come true

RHS How do you maintain harmony during the build when the tension increases and the contractor/designer relationship threatens to crack?

PD One of the reasons we’re in the position we’re in is that we do keep cool heads when the pressure seems insurmountable, but we are very solution-orientated, if you’re positive that way, you’ll always find one.

RHS How is Chelsea good for you?

PD Apart from being good for business, it’s massively important for stretching the team. Putting them in an environment where they’re pitching against the very best in international landscaping can only be a good thing. Unless you push yourself a bit further every time, you don’t get the growth, which is a philosophy we embrace as a team.

RHS Give us an example of a good team-stretching moment.

PD Our biggest build challenge was Shao Fan’s garden two years ago, when we dug down 2.3m. There was too much soil for the stockpile so we had to remove it from site and them bring it all back again after the show. Luckily we didn’t hit the water table or for that matter any Roman remains, which would have caused a few more problems! That was the deepest garden at Chelsea ever, and they actually needed planning permission for us to do it.