Peter Hughes KC
Chairman
Peter Hughes is Chairman of the Board of the Gardens Trust. After a career as a barrister in private practice, head of a large London set of chambers, and, from 2007, as a Circuit Judge, Peter Hughes retired from the Judiciary in July 2018. As head of chambers he had significant managerial and administrative experience. He completed a master’s degree course in Garden and Landscape History at London University in September 2020. He lives with his wife in the Lake District, where they care for an Arts and Craft house and garden. He is a member of the Cumbria Gardens Trust and, having been a member of the Garden History Society, of the Gardens Trust.
Christopher Blandford OBE
Vice Chairman and Conservation Committee Chair
Chris Blandford OBE is a landscape architect, master planner, and heritage specialist. He is Vice Chair of the Gardens Trust. Until 2017 he was Chairman and CEO of the award-winning CBA Studios, which he founded in 1977. Working nationally and internationally, he gained a broad range of technical experience in both the conservation and development fields, as well as considerable managerial and commercial expertise. He is a Fellow of the Landscape Institute, President of World Heritage UK, Vice Chairman of the South Downs National Park Design Review Panel and a past trustee of ICOMOS. He has regularly advised government on design, heritage and environmental matters. In retirement he lives and works in the Weald of Sussex surrounded by the extensive garden that he and his wife have created over 40 years.
Lisa Watson
Treasurer
Lisa Watson worked for the National Trust at Stowe Landscape Garden for 17 years, starting as a volunteer and then becoming Estate Secretary until she retired in 2009. She has been Company Secretary of London Parks and Gardens and is their Chairman. She was Treasurer of the Association of Gardens Trusts.
Catriona Stenhouse
Honorary Secretary
Catriona Stenhouse is a banking and finance solicitor, currently working for a law firm in London with specialism in real estate. She has great interest in gardening and history, having obtained the RHS’s Certificate in Horticulture in 2021 and an MA in Heritage Management, from Historic Royal Palaces in 2022. For the latter she chose to research the heritage value ascribed to trees by those managing busy heritage sites.
Rachel Savage
Audience Development, Marketing & Communications Committee Chair
Rachel Savage has over 25 years’ experience in the charity sector. She has considerable experience of strategic and financial planning, brand and audience development, facilitating organisational change, and delivering large scale marketing and fundraising campaigns. Prior to becoming Director of Planning for a full service marketing agency working with a number of charities, she held senior management, marketing and fundraising positions at the RHS, Save the Children and Voluntary Service Overseas. She has an MA in Landscape History and is researching part-time for a PhD, exploring the relationship between nineteenth-century domestic planning and garden design.
Jill Sinclair
Education & Training Committee Chair
Deborah Evans
Trustee
Teresa joined the Association of Gardens Trusts in 2011 as the AGT Co-ordinator. She has a local authority/Health Service background in management support, leisure and event management and ISO auditing.
Clare Hickman
Trustee
Francesca Murray
Trustee
Paul Rabbitts
Trustee
Paul Rabbitts is currently Head of Parks and Open Spaces at the City of Southend on Sea Council and has designed, managed, and restored public parks for 33 years. Qualified as a landscape architect, he is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and founder member and current Chair of the Parks Management Association, who represent parks management professionals across the UK. He is also a published author of 30 books, about parks, bandstands, the Royal Parks, local history as well as biographies on Grinling Gibbons, Sir Christopher Wren and architect Decimus Burton. He lectures widely across the UK about parks, the icon of public parks, the Victorian and Edwardian bandstand, including Gardens Trusts, Arts Societies, and anyone else prepared to listen. An advocate for parks for many years, he is currently working on an updated version of People’s Parks – The Design and Development of Victorian Parks in Britain, originally authored by Dr Hazel Conway. He can be followed on Twitter @bandmasta with all kinds of ramblings.
Joanna Davidson
Trustee
Joanna Davidson is ex-officio on the Board of the Gardens Trust. She is Chairman of the Welsh Historic Gardens Trust (WHGT) and lives on Anglesey. Her degree was in archaeology, followed by more than a decade of farming. Joanna retrained in horticulture, establishing a small business which has enabled her to design, plant, advise and lecture on horticulture in North Wales for the last 20 years, whilst also running a small plant nursery.