TV programme, Own Britain's Best Gardens, visits The Oxford College of Garden Design's Duncan Heather at home

Capitalising on the success of its hit series, Own Britain's Best Homes, Channel 5 has launched the hunt for UK gardens to feature in a new follow-on series, Own Britain's Best Gardens and guess where the producers have landed, with Duncan Heather, Principal of The Oxford College of Garden Design, at his home, Greystone.

Greystone is the Oxfordshire home of OCGD founder and principal designer, Duncan Heather, who, after training with John Brookes - widely-hailed as the single most influential garden designer of the 20th Century - has spent over a decade now sharing his personal design philosophy with OCGD students and, in turn, producing some of the best designers of the 21st Century.

Next week, Duncan and his wife, plantswoman Carol Heather, will play host to the show's flamboyant presenter, Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen and a panel of Judges who will be spending two days filming at Greystone and discussing the design merits of the two-acre garden.

One of the key attractions to the programme-makers (Thames TalkBack TV) was the fact Greystone is a woodland garden with over 200 majestic beech trees. If you're ever lucky enough to get an invite to Greystone, try and swing it so you go at night when, thanks to clever garden lighting, the trees take on an ethereal, almost Cathedral-like ambience. Stunning and very romantic!

To those who know him, Duncan is always the last man to blow his own trumpet and so, with his usual disarming honesty, when asked for a quote about Greystone being chosen as one of the best gardens in the UK says: "Is it the best garden in the UK? Probably not, but Carol and I would not swop it for anything."


WHO IS DUNCAN HEATHER?

Duncan Heather set up practice as a garden designer in 1987 and is the director of the prestigious Oxford College of Garden Design which offers a post-graduate diploma in residential landscape architect now widely recognised as one of the best garden design courses in the world (http://www.garden-design-courses.co.uk).

In a career now spanning over 30 years, Duncan has won five gold medals, one silver, one bronze and three awards for innovative design.

Although still a pretty-much well-kept secret in the world of design, the garden at Greystone has been written about before and to get an insider's insight into why it has made it onto the list of Own Britain's Best Gardens read the designer, John Brooke's detailed analysis of the design components and why they work in an article he wrote for The Garden Design Journal; the UK Society of Garden Designer's influential monthly publication.

For more information about another Duncan Heather-designed garden that caused a media buzz, read journalist Susan Clark's article for the same magazine on Furzebush; a pioneering garden just a few miles outside Henley-on-Thames, known locally for its "wow" factor and for Duncan, an unusual brief in that the garden has no "borrowed landscape" which meant he could really go to town with both bold contouring and even bolder Prairie-style planting.

For both articles, visit Duncan's own design website, http://www.garden-design.org/magazine_articles_frame.htm and click on magazine articles. Meanwhile, watch the Oxford College of Garden Design website (http://www.garden-design-courses.co.uk) for details of when the Channel 5 programme will be aired.

What do you think? Have you come across a private garden you think is one of the best you've ever seen? Is it your own garden or one you've designed? Let us know.