"Three years ago I was asked to design a garden as part of the Garten der Welt (Gardens of the World) category at the 2017 Berlin IGA, an international garden festival which runs until October 15. The budget was less than 20 per cent of what a garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show now costs and there was a very modest fee, but I was flattered to be asked and liked the idea that it would be a permanent garden, not just there for a week. I was also in good company; three other designers I admired: Teresa Moller from Chile, Vladimir Durovic from Lebanon and Kate Cullity from Australia had all agreed to come on board."

"It seems that alienation from nature is the inevitable fate of the elegant bourgeoisie, whereas perhaps if we keep Pissarro's dirt under our fingernails there is still hope that we can connect with the natural world."

"The past 10 years have seen an explosion in the popularity of gardens that might loosely be labelled as conceptual – where the theme or message of the garden is more important than any horticulture. But conceptual gardens can be tricky. A designer needs to formulate a sufficiently subtle narrative that bears up to daily reading."

"Gardening is a constant negotiation between freedom and control. On the one hand we have the clipped hedges, the neatly aligned rows of bedding and the collections of rare plants all neatly catalogued and preserved. At the other we have a seemingly endless quest for some elixir of the natural. We all have a position on this spectrum but it is arguable that Dutchman Piet Oudolf has done as much as anyone over recent years to redefine what is thought of as naturalism in planting."

"When you look at the rainfall maps of Peru, it goes from orange to purple here. In reality, one side is brown and the other is green. You go from somewhere there are maybe 50 different species of plant growing in scrubby ground, to one of the most biodiverse places in the world."

"Looking out from the top floor of Scott Sullivan and Anna Marrs' house in north London, you do a double take. Beneath you is an outlandish carpet of gigantic ferns, which from this height seem like vast dissected parasols of green covering the whole garden. You almost expect a triceratops or an iguanodon to poke its head out from between the fronds."

"This farm in north Norfolk, where I created a garden over three years, from 2005, is half a mile from the sea, set in a hinterland of beautiful small towns and villages that contrast with vast windswept beaches and empty marshes."

"Most gardeners will admit that even their finest efforts fall short of nature at its best. Every spring when I go into the bluebell woods around where I live in Hertfordshire, there is always a moment when, after drinking in the perfume and surveying the blue that seems to stretch to infinity, I wonder why I bother with all this gardening lark. The real thing is just so much better."

"Most gardens are set within a wider context than this; within a landscape or city that has its own patterns, cultural traditions and processes, and I always seek ways in which these can be reflected or distilled. In this way the garden becomes a receptacle of influence and condensation of landscape and culture, and not a completely ectopic extravaganza that turns its back on the qualities of a place."

"I have arranged to meet up with Zak Akers, 17, at the pond and vegetable patch he looks after in the grounds of his secondary school, the London Academy, a huge, mixed-intake school in Edgware, north London. Zak won his borough's young gardener of the year award for his work landscaping and planting the school pond. I want to find out what made a teenager like Zak, who has been in some trouble at school, to develop a love for gardening."

"Plants that grow fast and tall have a special appeal to me. It is partly that, at 6ft 5in, I am an outsized specimen myself, so I occasionally prefer to look a plant in the face than creep around the garden on my hands and knees in order to get an eyeful of detail."

"Behind the scenic Clipped box remains a dominant theme at Chelsea, where designers suffer a hectic week creating show gardens - some using extreme measures to preen blooms."