Andy Sturgeon is a English gardener and 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, he 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, and after working at the Royal Horticultural Society's garden at Wisley, went on world tour, collecting plants in Madagascar and working as an engineer on the Tsing Ma suspension bridge in Hong Kong.[4]
Sturgeon has won five gold medals at Chelsea Flower Show, with a run of four from 2005 to 2008,[5] and after taking 2009 off, he returned with a gold and best in show award in 2010.[1]
Sturgeon currently writes a gardening column for the Daily Telegraph, and presents on various gardening matters for the BBC. Sturgeon has written gardening columns for the various publications, including the Daily Mail.[3]
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. 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]