Tom Wolstenholme founded TWGD in 2012, guided by a long-standing interest in how people experience space, light, and the natural world — and by the belief that how we shape our immediate environments matters far more than we typically acknowledge.
Before working in gardens, Tom trained and worked as a technical illustrator and artist. That background shaped a particular approach to design — one built on clarity, proportion, and restraint — and developed a discipline for understanding how individual decisions come together to form a coherent whole.
In his early twenties, Tom stepped away from his career and spent two years living in a forest monastery as a Buddhist monk. That period changed everything about how he sees the relationship between environment and human wellbeing. Not as philosophy, but as lived experience: the understanding that space, rhythm, and the quiet presence of nature have a profound and measurable effect on how we feel — and that this effect can be designed for.
After leaving monastic life, Tom trained in construction, horticulture, and garden design — grounding that broader perspective in practical understanding. Today his work sits at the intersection of design, craft, and ecology: creating gardens that feel calm, purposeful, and built to outlast the moment of completion.
Tom remains personally involved in every project, from the first conversation through to the final detail. The aim is always the same: to create spaces that feel right, mature with grace, and continue to support the life lived within them.