Following news of the death of Fernando Caruncho, we look back at his impact on garden design

Published: August 28, 2026 at 5:58 am

Garden design has lost one of its leading figures in Spanish landscape designer Fernando Caruncho, who has died aged 68. Fernando was lauded for his gardens, which are often called minimalist and contemporary , and are known for being harmonious and timeless.

“People say I am contemporary,” he told me when I interviewed him back in 2017. “It is a discussion that is not interesting to me. Obviously I am contemporary, because I live now!” A charming, smiling presence, Fernando always saw himself as "a gardener", who identified and revealed the latent qualities of spaces. “To be a gardener is to be a man,” he said. “It is a profession, but it is also a way to be a human being.”

Fernando grew up in Madrid, under Franco, in a family of creatives, and spent summers in the countryside at his grandfather’s house near Malaga, where he developed an appreciation for nature.…