John Watkins
Chair of Trustees
John Watkins DHE, M.Hort(RHS), FCIHort
John Watkins is a professional horticulturist with some 47 years’ experience, awarded the RHS Associate of Honour in 2016. He was Senior Lecturer at Hadlow College in Kent and worked at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Edinburgh and Kew, the National Trust for Scotland and the Royal Horticultural Society at Wisley and Hyde Hall. In 2000 John became Head of Gardens and Landscape at English Heritage (now Historic England). He has been involved in a range of restoration, conservation and interpretation projects: the Elizabethan Garden at Kenilworth, the Fountain Garden at Bolsover, recreating the oak pasture around the Boscobel Oak, complex Georgian landscapes at Chiswick, Wrest Park and Marble Hill, and walled gardens at Audley End, Osborne, Mount Grace and Battle Abbey.
Working with partners across the horticultural sector he established and secured HLF funding to establish and run the Historic and Botanic Gardens Training Programmes place young people in historic gardens to receive practical training in gardens across the UK. He was on the management board of Plant Network, and the Kent Gardens Trust and whilst Chair of the Great Dixter Charitable Trust secured £7M (including HLF funding) to enable the Trust to be independent and secure. He both writes and lectures on plants and historic gardens and their management, including the Glasshouse Garden published by Conran Octopus and jointly edited and contributed to the English Heritage Manual: The Management & Maintenance of Historic Parks, Gardens & Landscapes.
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 Hoyes
Honorary Secretary
Catriona Hoyes (nee 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.
Christopher Blandford OBE
Trustee
Chris Blandford OBE is a landscape architect, master planner, and heritage specialist. 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.
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
Jill Sinclair is a US-educated garden historian, author and lecturer. She served as a trustee of the Historic Gardens Foundation and was joint editor of its magazine Historic Gardens Review. She is a tutor on the history of the English landscape garden for the University of Oxford. Now based in South Yorkshire after many years living abroad, Jill is advising a Sheffield charity on restoring a significant garden by Percy Cane and until recently was chair of the Friends of Sheffield Botanical Gardens.
Deborah Evans
Trustee
Deborah Evans is a landscape architect, historian and horticulturalist. She established her own consultancy in 2015 having worked in the public and private sectors. Between 2006 – 2014, Deborah was English Heritage (now Historic England) Landscape Architect for the East of England and East Midlands. She had previously worked for Cadw, the National History Museum, Wales and the National Trust, at the latter as the first Head Gardener/Estate Manager at Tyntesfield where she helped secure one of the largest HLF grants ever made. Deborah is an established trainer in the heritage sector, most recently relaunching the Managing Wildlife in the Historic Environment course at West Dean College. Deborah has been a member of the National Trust’s Historic Environment Advisory Group since 2016.
Clare Hickman
Trustee
Francesca Murray
Trustee
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.
Victoria Thomson
Trustee
Dr. Victoria Thomson’s professional background is in town planning and historic conservation: she is a Chartered Town Planner and a full member of the Institute for Historic Building Conservation. Her work has included stints in local and national government, a government agency, academia, and now the third sector. Victoria’s personal and research interests are very much focused on historic parks and gardens, and particularly on their protection.
Jo Barnes
Trustee
Jo has over 25 years’ experience in the historic and natural environment sector starting as a commercial archaeologist, before moving to the public sector, first as a building conservation officer, leading on conservation areas and urban regeneration through heritage led projects, and then to Natural England as a regional heritage adviser, specialising in the maintenance, management and reinstatement of designed landscapes and establishing the Historic Landscape Project at the Gardens Trust in partnership with Historic England. Now at the National Trust, Jo initially led on the conservation management of historic and natural assets in the South East, balancing development opportunities for heritage assets with long term sustainable futures and has recently moved into a National role as a strategic lead for Covenants.
