Regular By The Dart columnist, Colette Charsley spends her days transforming overgrown and mundane gardens into beautiful spaces for families, patients and retired couples. She has been working in and around Dartmouth as a landscape designer for the past 10 years but news of her work has spread and her architectural triumphs can now be found around the UK. Steph Woolvin discovered more about her life and work…
“I guess you could call it a mid-life crisis,” that is how Colette Charsley explains her change of career from working in property to becoming a landscape designer. After 20 years selling ‘up and running’ leisure businesses and attending intense meetings in London she thought enough was enough: “I would sit around the table with a lot of men talking absolute rubbish trying to outperform each other and it got to the point when I thought why am I doing this?” So, in her mid forties, she stopped playing the corporate game and decided to re-train doing something she loves out in the open.” I did a post-graduate course through Oxford Brookes University. It was horrific, I’ve never worked so hard in all my life!” She says some days she studied for 18 hours, stopping only for food! “Christmas wasn’t fun that year,” she remembers.
But after a year’s hard work she achieved the qualification required to set up her own business, Colette Charsley Associates, which she runs from her home near Slapton. “I was lucky as I found it quite easy to start the business thanks to my property contacts. I soon found out who needed work doing and I put myself forward and things grew from there.” She works on domestic and commercial projects, helping couples who need to transform their small garden now the children have left home right through to estate owners who aren’t sure what to do with acres of land. “I secured a couple of high profile contracts at the start of my career which helped spread the word. I was asked to transform the Rose Garden at Torbay Hospital which was a lovely project to work on.” She has also worked on care home gardens and public play parks. Colette believes that landscapes don’t simply need to be beautiful: “They have to be workable and sustainable. Achieving this requires an approach that fuses art and science to provide a solution that is aesthetically pleasing and practical. You wouldn’t believe how many people come to me with an idea they have seen in a magazine, but it’s not actually how they want to live at all.”
She says her first job when she takes on a domestic project is to grill the homeowners to find out how they live. “Usually they say they want a vegetable patch as their neighbour has one and I ask if they actually want to grow vegetables and they say ‘not really’! When you really get down to it most just want to get rid of the old shed or trampoline and create a nice area to sit and relax, drink a cup of tea or a gin and tonic and do the crossword. Only when they open up can we get down to the nitty gritty details like where exactly they want a table, if they need shade and how many plants they actually want to look after.” Colette says each garden comes with its own problems. For example, smaller ones are harder to design as you have to make each little bit of space count. She says some projects take more planning than others as anything that involves children needs all kind of risk assessments, making sure they can’t fall off or in anything and there aren’t any poisonous plants growing which may end up in little mouths. If it’s for older people, you need to make sure paths are wide enough for wheelchairs and consider adding sensory elements that will help those with dementia. “Any garden has the power to inspire and create delight in a way that property alone can rarely aspire to. Creating a stunning effect is within the grasp of anyone with a few square yards to many hundreds of acres.”
She says gardening programmes can help to give people ideas but many give a false impression of what is actually possible which can make her job hard at times: “They often don’t disclose the full amount the project actually cost so it raises expectations and it can be a bit awkward when you have to let people down. They come to me with such grand ideas and I have to gently explain that their budget won’t even cover the paving, let alone adding the lawn and water feature.” But when expectations are met Colette says she loves the job and really enjoys providing a new garden for people to take on and enjoy in their own way. She says it’s important to have some space, however small, to call your own and now, more than ever, people need somewhere they can relax: “Covid has meant many more people have ventured into their gardens and have needed space to breathe - it’s their sanctuary. Being outside and having something to care for can help people’s mental health generally and this is crucial at the moment to get many through this crisis.”
Colette, who was born and raised in Weston-Super-Mere, didn’t always want to be a gardener but she did want to be outdoors: “I studied anthropology at Durham University and wanted to be an intrepid explorer like my ancestor who married the niece of one of the Sultans of Zanzibar!” But she says she loves meeting new people in her current job and finding out what makes them tick. She says over the years she has had some funny requests, one lady wanted only white native edible plants. “So many people want a ‘cottage garden’ and I’m always interested to know exactly what they mean by this, most just want a rustic setting but I always wonder if some have visions of a cabbage patch and room for a pig!” Colette travels anywhere in the UK where there is an eager customer and there are now examples of her work in Kent and other home counties. She says no matter where she is it’s a beautiful feeling when she ‘hands over’ the garden, a bit like a midwife handing over a new baby: “People are often nervous and not quite sure what to do next! Many invite me back for tips and advice as they ease into their new environment.”
See examples of Colette’s work at www.charsleydesign.com
First published in By The Dart magazine in December 2020
