Andrew Woodall gave us a fascinating insight into his career, from manufacturing stilts for picking tomatoes and keeping giant snails, working as head gardener at several locations to his current position at Broughton Grange.
Andrew touched on some of the challenges he has encountered during his career; interpreting someone else’s vision, working with designers and to budgets, the aftermath of landscaping with modern machinery and living and working in Italy’s daytime heat.
Andrew’s first job in 1992 at Pennington House was to reinstate its garden which had been untouched for ten years. As a big step up 2000 his next job was to maintain the established garden at Fort Belvedere. In 2003 Andrew moved to Il Palagio in Italy to work alongside Arabella Lennox-Boyd where his first job was to sort out drainage problems due to compacted soil.
In 2006 Andrew became head gardener at Broughton Grange, working with a team of four he manages a 25 acre garden set within 400 acres of beautiful countryside near Banbury. The Grange’s gorgeous three terraced walled garden was designed by Tom Stuart-Smith with the lower terrace’s low box hedging representing the cells in ash, beech and oak leaves. The rest of the gardens design is the work of the owner and Andrew. Andrew told us that time during lockdown was put to good use by digging out box with blight and replacing with 4000 Euonymus ‘Jean Hugues’. This took three weeks to place and plant in the lower terrace alone!
