Andrew Pfeiffer
Andrew Pfeiffer is an Australian landscape architect. He was born in Sydney and grew up on a farm in the Bega Valley. Pfeiffer studied horticulture and landscape design at the Arboretum Kalmthout in Belgium and at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London, later working as a student gardener at both the Bowhill House and Boughton House estates of the Duke of Buccleuch in Scotland and England.[1]
Pfeiffer's first gardens were made in England, Austria, and Germany, followed by a number of commissions in Australia. He is based in Sydney and London, and has since worked around the world.
Two Pfeiffer-designed gardens (a desert garden in Sydney and a woodland garden of A. Alfred Taubman in Michigan) were featured in the 2008 book Luxury Private Gardens. Pfeiffer wrote: "When gardens like the one at Château de Courances in the Île-de-France near Paris or the Odette Monteiro estate at Correias near Rio de Janeiro are stripped down to their bare essentials, they are like a well-cut couturier’s gown—nothing but an utterly simple response to the unadorned landscape or the naked human body they are designed to fit."[2]
Pfeiffer believes that "great gardens have a timeless quality" and "should be thought of with a long view, and not in terms of superficial and fleeting fashion."[1] "The natural surroundings, combined with a sense of place, should always determine the character of a garden."[3]
Books
- Pfeiffer, Andrew (2000) A Sense of Place: The Gardens of Andrew Pfeiffer. Viking. ISBN 978-0670880942.
- Falkenberg, Haike (ed.) (2008) Luxury Private Gardens. teNeues. ISBN 978-3-8327-9226-8.