Adam Hunt & Lulu Urquhart set out on a design partnership adventure almost 15 years ago.  Both are passionate plant-lovers, environmentalists and landscape designers, so setting up a landscape design practice was a natural way for them to explore these interests. Urquhart & Hunt is a Landscape Design Studio based in Frome, Somerset.

What career did you envisage for yourself when you were in the Sixth Form at Downe House? 

I fancied myself as a bit of a female Steven Spielberg..  I was house Drama Captain in sixth-form in Tedworth and had written some really cool plays with all the year groups.  I loved doing drama with the school and found a lot of confidence in rolling out plays and directing them.  I really enjoyed collaborating and working together with all the years in this intense and creative environment.  I wanted to go on to films and applied to study Film and Media Studies at Leeds.

Funnily enough, I also had a passion in understanding religion and faith and after a gap year spent travelling & working in Nepal, India, Asia and the Phillipines with 2 beautiful friends from school and having that amazing chance to meet the world and cogitate on things with fellow travellers, locals in the communities I was living and even in an audience with a local Nepalese lama, I came home with a taste for more of that.  So I withdrew my place from Leeds and wrote on the UCAS form “Comparative Religion ~ Edinburgh” on a one line uni application.  Something deep in my bones told me that was where I needed to be, and what a blessing it was.
 
When did you start the business?

After several life stories of their own, I settled on living and working with the land as a quest.  After training in organic farming, medicinal herbs, ayurvedic medicine, specialist plant nurseries, all while being a jobbing gardener, I realised how much I loved putting it all together, so I started to offer myself as a garden designer around 2003.  3 years later I was to meet a very awesome other garden designer Adam Hunt, and we collaborated on a magical project; building a homeopath couples’ garden. By the end of the project we decided to embark on a partnership and launched Urquhart & Hunt Landscape Design Studio in 2007.

Last year I also co-set up The Tree Conference.  It’s a charity and annual conference to promote the work of organisations and people all over the globe doing amazing things for trees.  We aim to halt deforestation, save mature trees and ancient groves, and bring the best most amazing whole science and knowledge on trees, soils and radical health and wellness.
 
What is your previous background?

From a base of studying world religions and realising they were all paths up the same mountain, my energies and passions went to caring for the planet – the mountain herself J.  After university I pursued Fairtrade – a just global economic system, supporting the farmers on the ground and promoting organic practises.  I also had a bout of the advertising world by running an annual awards competition for creative design in advertising.  I broke lose to set up a Fairtrade Organic Hot Chocolate! Soon I was weary of city life and after transforming a little garden patch in a shared London house, with lavender and jasmine, I felt a call to get back into nature.. Its funny how life leads you gently to where you need to be..
 
Describe a typical day for you

I don’t have a typical day.  But my two beautiful boys go to school, so there is rhythm there, but from that point I may need to be anywhere or be doing a huge range of things.

I have a Landscape Design studio in Frome in Somerset with Adam and 5 others, working on projects all over the UK and the globe, focussing on ecological restoration, sacred spaces and plantsmanship.

Sometimes I am on-site, looking at soil or land, chatting about where trees should go, or thinking through plans and ideas with clients or contractors.  Often I’m in the studio doing research, or at the drawing board, or chatting through projects with my team.  My dog Tom, a small lurcher, comes with me everywhere, so if I’m in the studio, he is curled up on a sofa next to my desk.
I work with land geomancy too, so for example today I went out with a tree dowser and we spent a sunny autumn day walking through ancient woods near to me and checking out energy lines in the landscape. 
 
What has been the biggest challenge with your business?

We have gone through the various classic challenges of starting up your own business and have clearly grown with it, so to speak.  An obvious challenge for us are keeping the ship sailing, the projects brilliant, while still managing to make the right money.  It’s such a roller coaster ride. 

But my biggest challenge is slowing down and making the time I need for myself, as there is a forever to do list with your own business, and landscape architecture tends to come with enormous amounts of hours to pull off good work.  I suppose it’s good I have been so motivated, but sometimes I wish I could build in a little more chill time in my day. 

Luckily my children have enforced me to slow down, put more reliance on my team and be more gentle all round.  Otherwise what mother would I be? I believe it’s a truly blessed thing to be a woman, and to be able to experience motherhood and to get off the ‘wheel’, and I know THAT to be the most important job on the planet.  Juggling both “jobs” therefore is huge, but if I tune in and listen, then I know that it is the latter, mumness, that is more important, because we are raising the future and it is they who need our time, attentions and creativity.

Urquhart & Hunt