Roy Strong is the former Director of the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum, where he hosted the first seminal exhibition on the history of gardens in the UK in 1979. He has a highly successful career as a writer on garden design and was co-creator of The Laskett Gardens with his late wife, Julia Trevelyan Oman, which he gave to Perennial in 2020. He is the author of the groundbreaking The Renaissance Garden in England, published in 1979 and updated in 1998. There is of course much more, including the first TV series on the Royal Gardens and designing the topiary and hedges at Highgrove as well as a garden for Sir Elton John.