A Rewilding Britain Landscape Garden scooped the top prizes at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show. Capturing how landscape can evolve when nature and wildlife are allowed to flourish, the garden was one of many that drew on the beauty of wild landscapes and woodland settings. Collectively, they conveyed the message that choosing biodiverse-rich plants not only supports our natural environment, wildlife and our planet, it also allows for the creation of gardens of great beauty.
The Rewilding Britain Landscape Garden was created by Urquhart & Hunt, a landscape design studio dedicated to nature. First-time exhibitors at the show, the design duo scooped both the Gold Medal and Best in Show for their enchanting native landscape in the process of rewilding, incorporating rich biodiversity and showcasing the dynamic habitat created by the reintroduction of beavers.
Among other gardens celebrating wildlife and offering a more naturalistic look, the Meta Garden, designed by Joe Perkins, highlighted the connection between plants and fungi in our woodland ecosystems.
The Alder Hey Urban Foraging Station garden featured planting inspired by a number of habitats that were once commonplace including species-rich hedgerow, orchard meadow and bog/ditch habitats.
Encouragingly, the theme of this year’s Blue Peter Garden was ‘discover soil’ and encouraged people to take notice of soil by bringing it up to eye level for people to see, touch, smell and hear. The garden’s message was, ‘Don’t treat soil like dirt!’, soil is complex and alive and we can’t survive without it. It reinforced the knowledge that we are losing soil faster than nature can replenish it and we need to look after it.
Tackling international issues, A Hands Off Mangrove garden united two prominent themes – global deforestation and social injustice. A deforested mangrove sculpture at the centre acted as a stark reminder of the impacts we are having on our planet’s most important ecosystems, both locally and globally.
Extending the love of nature to the people who work in gardens, was The Perennial Garden, With Love, which won the People’s Choice Award. Rooted in designer Richard Miers’ and the charity Perennial’s belief that gardens are a gift of love, giving pleasure to those who create and nurture them as much as to those who visit and enjoy them, the garden combined hornbeam hedging with hawthorn trees and yew. The calming setting was inspired by those that work in horticulture, who are offered support by the work of the Perennial charity.
If you are interested in discovering how you could manage your garden for wildlife, Suffolk Wildlife Trust has teamed up with the Perennial charity to offer a Wildlife Gardening Course followed by an exclusive tour of the Perennial Garden Fullers Mill near Bury St Edmunds.
Find out more about the course, book your place here!
Read more about Suffolk Wildlife Trust's own wilding journey
Watch the webinar on wilding with Dorothy Casey
Find out more about this year's Chelsea Flower Show