Thomas Hart Dyke is an English horticulturist, author and plant hunter from the Hart Dyke family of Lullingstone Castle, Kent, one of England’s oldest family estates.  Tom is the 20th generation of the Hart Dykes to live at the Castle and is the designer of the World Garden of Plants located on the property.

Tom is a modern day plant hunter who follows in the traditions of the plant hunters of old who risked life and limb in pursuit of fantastic blooms and plants.  His experience includes a 9-month kidnapping ordeal in Panama/Columbia in 2000.  He occupied himself by creating a design for a garden containing plants collected on his trips, laid out in the shape of a world map according to their continent of origin.  The resulting World Garden showcases rare and important botanical plants and contains approximately 8,000 species of plants, many collected by Hart Dyke from their native environments.

Tom’s garden won the prestigious British Guild of Travel Writers UK Tourism Award in 2005; he was made President of the Australasian Plant Society in 2011, was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Canterbury Christ Church University on 27th January 2017.  Tom continues to plant hunt around the world, is busy working in the World Garden and fighting hard to save his ancestral home.