About Olivia Kirk
Olivia Kirk is an experienced landscape and garden designer who specialises in creating healing gardens. Based in Herefordshire she has a project portfolio of public and private schemes all around the UK as well as a number of high-profile show gardens to her name. She was awarded an RHS Chelsea Gold medal in 2011 for her ‘Power of Nature’ Garden. Her most recent garden at Chelsea for The WellChild Charity was re-located to the Brook on Broadwaters School in Tottenham. She is a regular tutor for The London College of Garden Design based in Kew and has recently lectured for Kew and the SGD as well as contributed to books and articles by the RHS on the subject of low allergen gardening in the public domain.
Low allergen specialist:
Olivia specialises in designing healing and therapeutic gardens, particularly for hospices and dementia care. After researching and designing a Low Allergen garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower show in 2020 for the National Pollen and Aerobiology Research Unit she had a eureka moment. Healing and therapeutic gardens need to have low allergen planting otherwise there is potential to bring unnecessary discomfort and stress to patients that already have enough to deal with. In the intervening 10 years she has done extensive research into this little known or documented area of planting design, finding that pollen and food allergies are closely linked and taking a toll on our increasingly over-loaded immune systems struggling to keep up with modern life.
Olivia is currently running various workshops for the Society of Garden Designers and the London College of Garden Design, aimed at giving garden designers the necessary tools and knowledge to be able to create gardens that function well and look beautiful without causing discomfort or distress to the people who use them.
Testimonial
“As well as being an award winning designer Olivia has a sympathetic understanding of the needs of the children. She has tremendous imagination and flair for designing useable spaces that allow for free expression of sometimes complex and difficult feelings. We are delighted to be working with Olivia on our new children’s bereavement garden and are very excited by her early designs and proposals.”
