One Show Garden
The UK has over 15 million gardens and a large proportion of these will be owned by families with children. So it is not surprising that every year some of the gardens at the Hampton Court Flower Show have some inspiring ideas for family gardens. This year two gardens caught my eye.
The One Show Garden
This garden was designed by the winner of the One Show Competition. The first time, as far as I am aware, the design of a garden at a RHS Show was open to anyone. Well done to the One Show. Let’s hope it happens again next year. One of the criteria the winner, Vicky Stothard, had to meet was how well does the design work for the family.
The entry to this garden was through a small cutting leading downwards into the garden. The planting was lovely and naturalistic. As a small child you would not fail to feel that this was a magical place where are sorts of make believe characters could live. I especially like the leaf structures –ideal for a bird bath or water play.
A Moveable Feast
What happens to your garden when you move home? How and what do you plant when you know that you are going to be in a home for a limited time? Questions that are all relevant to army wives. The Moveable Feast Garden was their answer. The solution was to plant in containers. Everything grown in the moveable feast garden was edible and portable.
Containers are also very child friendly solutions. Container gardening makes it easy for children to access soil. You can also easily allocate different containers to different children.
I loved the way the garden used all different types of containers for its planting. I’m sure most people know that you can use old tin cans and drink bottles, but it was useful to see it undertaken on such a large scale. The supermarket shopping bags were a great idea and the army boots were certainly a good alternative to welly boots.
What I love best about flowers shows and, indeed, visiting other peoples gardens are all the snippets of ideas you come away with. You’ll see from the photo montage above that there was certainly plenty of food for thought at this year’s Hampton Court Flower Show.
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