Gordon Ford was born the son of a Presbyterian minister and raised in Narramine and Wellington in rural New South Wales. Completing his secondary schooling in Mebourne he found it difficult to adjust to the urban life but managed by the age of 18 after he had left school to make the adjustment stating that he had become one of the the fastest foxtrotters at Leggett's Ballroom in Prahran. From the age of 18 to 22 he worked for the Forests Commission and at 22 he enlisted in the Army. In 1936 he was introduced to the creative community which had emerged at Eltham and was perhaps most strongly characterized by the utopian artistic community at 'Montsalvat' which coalesced around Justus Jorgensen at this time. With the arrival of World War Two Ford was 'called up' and appears to have spent the war years dreaming of living with his friends in Eltham. Within weeks of his discharge from the Army in 1945 he purchased 0.6 hectares of land at Eltham. He commenced working with the environmentally sensitive building designer Alistair Knox on his mud brick building projects. Knox's wife Margot was working with the pioneer 'natural' landscape designer Ellis Stones and introduced Ford to Stones. In 1950 and 1951 Ford worked for the older Stones learning the principles of native landscape design. He described Stones as both friend and mentor. In 1952 ford commenced his own practice as a landscape designer. Through Ellis Stones Ford was introduced to Edna Walling for whom he seems to have worked on occasions during the 1950's. The Eltham community regarded the use of indigenous plants and landforms in landscape design as another aspect of the search for an indigenous Australian character that the contemporary figurative-modernist painters were engaged in naming the Antipodean Manifesto as an example of this.