Andy Sturgeon is an English garden designer, who won the 2010 Chelsea Flower Show best in show award.[1]
The son of a bank manager,[2] Sturgeon was raised in Claygate, Surrey, and educated at Kingston Grammar School.[3]
A year after leaving school, persuaded by his brother Neil who was a landscape gardener,[4] Sturgeon decided to become a gardener. Initially working as a jobbing landscape gardener, he decided that he wanted to "design the garden rather than just mixing the cement."[2] He trained at the Welsh College of Horticulture, graduating in 1987,[5] and after working at the Royal Horticultural Society's Wisley Garden, set up his own business. He sold this in 1994, and went travelling on world tour,[6] collecting plants in Madagascar and working as an engineer on the Tsing Ma suspension bridge in Hong Kong.[7]
Returning to the UK in 1997,[6] Sturgeon set up his new garden design business. He has since won five gold medals at Chelsea Flower Show, with a run of four from 2005 to 2008 when he was sponsored by Cancer Research UK.[8] After taking 2009 off, he returned with a gold medal and best in show award in 2010, with a garden for the Daily Telegraph.[1]
Sturgeon currently writes a gardening column for the Daily Telegraph, and presents on various gardening matters for the BBC. In recent years he has co-presented with Nicki Chapman the BBC's lunchtime coverage of Chelsea. Sturgeon has written gardening columns for the various publications, including the Daily Mail,[3] Daily Express and Sunday Times.[5]
Sturgeon and his partner Sarah Didinal met at his sister Lisa's house in Thailand in 1996. The couple had three children, all boys, and lived in Brighton, East Sussex.[6] Sarah Didinal died a week after the 2009 Chelsea Flower Show, from heart arrhythmia that had been caused by a cold and sore throat that had moved to her heart.[3][9]