Caroline Holmes
Caroline Holmes is a garden historian of places, people and plants, a speaker, author of 12 books, TV and radio broadcaster and consultant designer who specialises in evoking historic, artistic and symbolic references. She has travelled extensively across, researched in and written on France and Italy, both rich sources of the harmony we find in architecture, gardens and music. Academic but not dry, Caroline has been a speaker on every continent except Antarctica, she is a lecturer for The Arts Society (formerly NADFAS) for whom she has also toured in Australia and New Zealand as well as Europe. She is a Course Director for the University of Cambridge’s ICE International Summer Programme exploring English Houses and Gardens, how they define Englishness or express personalities, politics, British royalty and wealth.
She has lectured on many specialist tours around Florence, Siena and Rome. Garden design consultancies include: Humanist Renaissance inspired gardens for Notre Dame de Calais; Knots, Orchards and Operatic Borders for the Royal Opera House at High House, Essex; and devising the plantings and lore for the Poison Garden in The Alnwick Garden, Northumberland. She has devised two theatrical productions celebrating gardens ‘Impressionists in their Gardens – living light and colour’ and ‘How does your garden grow Mr. Shakespeare?’.