Paul Allen Smith, Jr. (born March 12, 1960)^[1] is an American garden designer, author, television host, entrepreneur, and conservationist.

Smith is one of America's most recognized garden and design experts, providing ideas and guidance through multiple media venues.

He has hosted four television series since 1989, most recently P. Allen Smith's A Sense of Place, scheduled to begin airing on public television in October 2026.^[2]

He is the author of seven books, including the Garden Home series published by Clarkson Potter/Random House and, most recently, Moss Mountain Farm: A Sense of Place (2026).^[3]

Life and work

Paul Allen Smith Jr., known professionally as P. Allen Smith, is recognized as one of the country's leading authorities on horticulture and garden design. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, and raised in McMinnville, Tennessee, he is a fourth-generation nurseryman whose family background in southern horticulture shaped his early training.^[4] He earned a B.A. in Biology and History from Hendrix College in 1983,^[5] then received a Rotary International Scholarship to study garden design and history at the University of Manchester, where he retraced, 200 years to the day, the tour of English country estates taken by Thomas Jefferson and John Adams — an experience that established the design vocabulary underlying his later American commissions.^[6]

Returning to Arkansas, Smith entered the family nursery and garden-design business before founding P. Allen Smith & Associates, a Little Rock, AR landscape and garden design-construction firm.^[7] His design philosophy, rooted in the classical English tradition of Palladio, Brown, and Repton has made him one of the most sought-after landscape designers in the country.^[8]

Smith has also built his national media profile as host and producer of P. Allen Smith's Garden Home, distributed by American Public Television and among PBS's most successful and longest-running lifestyle programs,^[9][10] along with P. Allen Smith's Garden to Table and the syndicated Garden Style.^[11] He was a recurring garden and design contributor on NBC's Today Show and Good Morning America,^[12] his work has been frequently published in addition to his television work.

The centerpiece of Smith's public profile is Moss Mountain Farm, his 550-acre estate on the Arkansas River near Little Rock, cited as a contemporary example of the Ferme Ornée tradition.^[13][14] The property functions as both a working design laboratory and destination.^[15] In 2020, Smith expanded his enterprise into green manufacturing with the acquisition of Extreme Panel Technologies, a structurally insulated panel (SIP) company, extending his design influence into sustainable, energy-efficient construction.^[16][17]

Smith's institutional affiliations reflect standing at the top tier of American horticulture and preservation. He is a Trustee of Winterthur,^[18] a former Board Member of the Royal Oak Foundation (the U.S. partner of Britain's National Trust),^[19] a Certified Fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society,^[20] and an Honorary Member of the Garden Club of America, which awarded him its Medal of Honor in 2006.^[21] He also serves as Honorary President of the Herb Society of America^[22] and is a life member of the Livestock Conservancy, the Rare Breeds Trust (UK), and the Society for the Preservation of Poultry Antiquities.^[23]

In 2009, Smith founded the Heritage Poultry Conservancy, an organization dedicated to preserving threatened breeds of domestic poultry,^[24] reflecting a broader conservation commitment that runs alongside his design work — including supporting preservation programs at Monticello and Mount Vernon.^[25] He is also a TEDx speaker and a frequent presenter at many of the country's most prominent historic homes and garden institutions.^[26]

Television

Smith began appearing on television in 1989, hosting a weekly gardening segment on Little Rock station KATV's Daybreak program.^[1] In 2000, he launched his first nationally syndicated program, P. Allen Smith's Gardens, largely filmed at his historic home in Little Rock's Quapaw Quarter.^[1] That program evolved into P. Allen Smith's Garden Style, a 30-minute show internationally distributed by The Television Syndication Company.^[27]

Smith's P. Allen Smith's Garden Home series on garden design and outdoor living shares lifestyle trends and stories of people who are making a positive impact in their communities. Some episodes are filmed at Smith's Arkansas Home, Moss Mountain Farm, near Little Rock, Arkansas. ^[28]

P. Allen Smith's Garden to Table, pairs seasonal growing with cooking.^[29] Smith's fourth program, P. Allen Smith's A Sense of Place, is scheduled to begin airing on public television stations in October 2026.^[2] Filmed at Smith's Moss Mountain Farm in Arkansas, the series covers regional gardening traditions, seasonal planting, heirloom vegetable varieties, pollinators, and seed saving.^[2]

Beyond his own productions, Smith has appeared as a national television contributor on The Weather Channel, the CBS Early Show, NBC's Today Show, Fox and Friends, and Good Morning America, sharing gardening and design techniques with viewers.^[30][31] Smith also shares popular episodes from his shows on YouTube.

Publications

Personal homes and gardens

Awards and honors

• Member of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem^[50]
• Medal of Honor, Garden Club of America (2006), the organization's oldest national award, for outstanding service to horticulture^[51]
• Honorary Member, Garden Club of America (since 2007)^[52]
• Arkansas Cultural Enrichment Award, Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival (2009)^[1]
• 4-H Celebration of Excellence Award, National 4-H Council (2011)^[1]
• Garden Communicator Award, American Nursery and Landscape Association^[1]
• Horticultural Communicator Award, American Horticultural Society^[1]
• Odyssey Award, Hendrix College Board of Trustees^[1]
• Inducted into the Taste Hall of Fame (2015), for his impact in the world of taste and broadcast entertainment^[53]
• Mid-America Regional Emmy Award for Lifestyle Program, for A Garden Home Christmas (2020)^[54]

Smith's television programs have received numerous additional industry honors. P. Allen Smith's Garden Home won the Taste Award for "Best Green or Organic Program" in 2013, 2014, and 2016, and received four Taste Awards in 2013 alone.^[53] Between 2013 and 2020, Smith's programs and branded content — including Garden Home, Garden to Table, and Garden Style — received more than a dozen additional Telly Award and Taste Award honors across categories such as instructional programming, branded video, and general lifestyle content.^[53][55]

References

External links

• P. Allen Smith's Website

• P. Allen Smith on YouTube

• P. Allen Smith speaks at the National Book Festival (10/4/2003)
• "The Martha Stewart of the South", Kim Severson, The New York Times, 4 August 2010.