Juliet Rose Bagaya
Sargeant is an award winning garden designer, author and TV Presenter, with her own teaching school in Sussex. She was the first female Black designer to exhibit at the Royal Horticultural Show (RHS) annual Chelsea Flower Show in 2016. Her anti-slavery show The Modern Slavery Garden was awarded an RHS gold medal and the People’s Choice Award.
September 1965
Tanzania
Tanzanian father and English mother
2016 – GG2 Leadership Award
2016 – Evening Standard Top 100 People
2016 – RHS Gold Medal winner
2017 – SGD Hard Landscaping Award
2012 – SGD Sustainability Award
2020 – Fellowship of the Landscape Institute
Her parents met in London, where her Tanzanian father was a student. Born in Tanzania, she moved to England at the age of two, where she lived in the grounds of the boarding school where her residential social worker mother worked. After growing up and going to school in the Southeast, she qualified as a doctor at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, University of London in 1990.
Sargeant left medicine after working as a doctor for four years, returning to university to study garden design, gaining a BSc(Hons) in Garden Design from Middlesex University. She runs her own garden design business along with The Sussex Garden School.
In 2005 she co-authored A New Naturalism, a book containing workshops on garden design.
She came to greater prominence when she was awarded a gold medal for her first exhibit at Chelsea in 2016, for her show Modern day Slavery, at the age of 50. It was a journalist that noted she was the first Black female exhibitor, and this took Sargeant by surprise, saying “I don’t come across any other Black designers when I’m out and about. But that doesn’t mean Black people aren’t interested in gardening and design.”
Sargeant is a Registered Fellow of the Society of Garden Designers since 2017 for her contributions to the society. Also in 2017the RHS commissioned her to design a special Feature Garden – the RHS Kitchen Garden. This was both beautiful and functional and featured straw bale planting for the first time at Chelsea. Sargeant and her Kitchen Garden featured on a special episode of the long running TV programme the Hairy Bikers – Kitchen Garden Live with the Hairy Bikers
She is a regular panellist on BBC Radio 4’s Gardener’s Question Time and has also appeared on Ch4’s Operation People Power, Ch4’s Village of the Year and most recently BBC Radio Dig-It Extra.
Subsequently she has featured as a guest presenter on Gardener’s World, the BBC’s flagship gardening programme. Her media contributions both broadcast and print tend to focus on wellbeing aspects of nature. She will join the Gardener’s World team for the duration of the 2022 Chelsea Flower Show, where she will once again be exhibiting.
In the BBC centenary year of 2022, its flagship children’s programme, Blue Peter will be getting a new garden. Sargeant has been chosen to design the new Blue Peter Garden – Discover Soil, which will preview at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in May before it goes to a permanent home at RHS Garden Bridgewater from Autumn 2022. Sargeant wants to draw attention to the importance of soil to our world, saying in a press release:
“Down-trodden and neglected, soil is the ‘forgotten climate solution’ beneath our feet. Healthy soils not only feed most of life on Earth but also act as an essential carbon sink for damaging greenhouse gases.”
“Down-trodden and neglected, soil is the ‘forgotten climate solution’ beneath our feet. Healthy soils not only feed most of life on Earth, but also act as an essential carbon sink for damaging greenhouse gases.”
“I have personal experience from Tanzania in East Africa of the devastating effects of soil degradation and so I grasped this opportunity to bring the message of the importance of soil to children’s attention.”
Sargeant lives in Rottingdean and runs her garden design business from offices nearby. She is married to husband Chris, who she met when they were both at medical school in London. They have two daughters.
Sargeant spends her spare time wandering on the beach near Newhaven and working on her allotment. She told Arts and Gardens magazine that she enjoys craft – stained glass, sewing, mosaics and oil painting.
https://www.rhs.org.uk/shows-events/rhs-chelsea-flower-show/history/2016/gardens/The-Modern-Slavery-Garden
Credits (where info sourced from)
https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/14991966.ex-doctor-breaks-new-ground-in-garden-design-and-wins-praise-host-of-stars/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-46225037
https://www.standard.co.uk/insider/style/juliet-sargeant-makes-history-as-first-Black-designer-at-chelsea-flower-show-a3249136.html
https://www.yellowpoppymedia.com/single-post/juliet-sargeant-designs-a-new-garden-in-honour-of-blue-peter
