About Sarah

Sarah Heaton is a gardener designer and professionally trained horticulturist, who designs city gardens. Her passion for gardening and its sensory pleasures started young with first memories of eating baby tomatoes and growing radishes next to her wendy house as a little girl.

It is this joy of nature that informs Sarah’s gardening style and belief that gardens are made for living and not just admiring. Sarah’s gardening is very much about people and creating a green and floriferous landscape to meet people’s needs. 

Sarah had a career in public relations working in London, Hong Kong and Australia for twenty years before retraining as a gardener in 2011. Her focus moved from the corporate world to the domestic after getting married and becoming a mother. 

When Sarah became a governor of Vanessa Nursery School, she helped transform its outdoor area. She then became a governor at John Betts Primary School and, encouraged by staff and parents, ran the school gardening club for many years. This early collaborative approach with parents, teachers and children formed the basis of the way she gardens with clients. 

Sarah started her gardening business after training at Capel Manor College, Gunnersbury Park, where she qualified with the RHS Certificate in the Principles of Horticulture in 2012, with commendations in garden design, growing vegetables and plant biology

In additional to private client work, Sarah also works as a community gardener, working with patients at an NHS hospital in Richmond and with local volunteer gardening groups including Wendell Park Gardening Friends. She is based in Shepherds Bush, London. 

Sarah wrote a monthly column on gardening for the Fulham Gazette and www.getwestlondon.co.uk for several years and has had articles published in The Guardian and a book published by Kew, “Kew’s Teas, Tonics and Tipples”. 

Sarah keeps in touch with the latest views, news and trends in gardening through membership of organisations such as the RHS, Society of Garden Designers (SGD), National Trust, Woodland Trust and Kew Gardens. She goes to the Chelsea Flower Show annually, regularly attends lectures at the SGD and visits gardens eg Kew, Ham House, and gardens in the National Garden Scheme.