It’s less than a month since the OCGD post-grad intake of 2007/2008 wowed the industry with their end-of-term Student Exhibition and while the course is structured so that students complete a summer planting portfolio and so do not graduate before the Autumn, many of them are already launched and working on impressive projects.
For example, Susan Clark, (www.thegardenagency.uk.com) a journalist who decided to take to the OCGD course so she could write more knowledgeably on garden design, has been commissioned by the top UK film director Gurinder Chadha, (Bend It Like Beckham…and her new film is the quirky teen smash Angus, Thongs & Perfect Snogging) to design the outdoor space at her new Primrose Hill family home, including a large roof terrace, Japanese-style adult courtyard and kids’ play garden and Christopher James, a fellow Class of 2007/2008 student, has been snapped up by another former OCGD London designer and success story, Charlotte Rowe.
And as if that wasn’t glamorous enough, half-way through the course, student-turned-presenter, Shatsi Sabri, landed her own tv garden series fronting a garden show for a Pakistani production company which has just been commissioned for a second series.
For more updates on Where Are They Now? for the Class of 2007/2008 and previous years, check in on the website where we’ll be posting interviews with OCGD students who have successfully launched design careers and for an insight into why they are so successful, or register for update alerts for my garden design blog
Thoughts from the Principal of the Oxford College of Garden Design
