Arit Anderson

Arit Anderson is a British garden designer, writer and broadcaster, best known to UK audiences as a presenter on BBC Two's Gardeners' World. She is the co-author, with Swedish tree scientist Henrik Sjöman, of The Essential Tree Selection Guide: For Climate Resilience, Carbon Storage, Species Diversity and Other Ecosystem Benefits (Filbert Press, 2023, in association with Kew Publishing) — a 528-page reference whose preface she wrote and whose argument for the right tree in the right place she has championed in print and on screen.

Arit came to horticulture in her mid-forties, after a twenty-five-year career in retail fashion and creative events at senior management level. Moving into a house with her first garden was the trigger; a diploma in garden design at Capel Manor College followed, and during her studies she won the RHS Fresh Talent category at the 2013 Chelsea Flower Show alongside two fellow students. In 2016 she took a Gold Medal in the Conceptual category at RHS Hampton Court for a show garden built around the impact of climate change and the need for renewable energy. She is a chartered member of the Landscape Institute and runs her own practice, Diamond Hill Garden Design, working on private and commercial projects in London and the Home Counties, with commissions as far afield as Deià, Mallorca.

Her design ethos is rooted in simplicity and environmental sensitivity, with close attention to the provenance and afterlife of every material and plant she specifies. The themes she returns to — climate adaptation, biodiversity, reducing plastic in horticulture, and the role of gardens in mental and physical wellbeing — shape both her built work and her wider advocacy. In 2021 she designed The BBC One Show and RHS Garden of Hope at the Chelsea Flower Show, and at Chelsea 2026 she returns with a show garden in support of Parkinson's UK. In 2025 she was awarded the RHS Veitch Memorial Medal in recognition of her contribution to horticultural science and practice.

Arit has presented on BBC Two's Gardeners' World since 2017 and on BBC One's Garden Rescue, and hosts the BBC Gardeners' World Magazine podcast Growing Greener — a long-running series of conversations with leading voices in sustainable horticulture including Nigel Dunnett, Tony Kirkham, Marian Boswall, John Little and Kate Bradbury. She writes regularly for the national press and the gardening trade titles, serves on the Board of Trustees of the National Garden Scheme, and is an RHS Ambassador.

More about Arit's work at aritanderson.com and her design studio at diamond-hill.co.uk.

By Arit Anderson

The Essential Tree Selection Guide

For climate resilience, carbon storage, species diversity and other ecosystem benefits
with Henrik Sjöman · published in association with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

View the book