RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival 2021
For the last few years environmental issues have started to have an increasing influence on exhibits at the major UK gardening shows. Allotment gardening, planting for biodiversity, bee-friendly gardening, gardening for physical and mental health, have been some of the issues changing garden design. This welcome trend continued at the Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival that just finished.
One of the largest show gardens – the first to be seen by visitors who arrived by car – was planted with drought-resistant plants. This recognised the slowly changing weather patterns that climate-change is bringing to us all. The most noticeable feature of the garden was its loose overall plan. I’m so used to show gardens being crammed into carefully pegged-out areas. But Hampton Court offers the luxury of space. So gone were the straight edges! With this garden the edges meandered and flowed, rather like a river of plants flowing through the landscape. The planting was beautiful, with lots of pastel colours. There were many taller plants – from mid-to-shoulder height with occasionally one or two even taller ones creating natural undulations – opening and closing views through and over the plants. Here and there small ‘pops’ of colour added eye-catching moments. It was good to see that many of these plants are included in SeeHow volume 1. The beds were deep and the planting was dense. Most of us do not have large enough gardens to replicate this as a whole. But this was not its purpose. Unlike typical show gardens, this garden show-cased the natural character of the plants themselves and not the ‘grand design’.
Walking only a little further into the show ground, visitors were confronted by a conceptual garden containing the remains of a crashed passenger jet, with the words ‘Homo Sapiens’ written-large down the side. It was created by garden designer Felicity O’Rourke and called ‘The Extinction Garden’. This was the most direct message I have seen at any show garden to date, clearly stating that humans are destroying the planet. The crashed aeroplane was half buried in a field of wheat – the crop symbolizing the advent of settled agriculture – a practice now affecting most of the Earth’s surface with little regard for biodiversity, driven simply by human numbers.
The above message was very powerful. But I would like to have seen the exhibit directly linked to positive solutions. Rethinking food production and farming practices, animal welfare and vegetarianism, true biodiversity restoration – finding the ecological balance between humanities needs and the needs of ‘everything else’. We really do need ‘everything else’ if we are to prosper on a healthy and happy planet! Personally, I think we need to confront ‘The Truth’ as Extinction Rebellion have pointed out. The tragic state of the world should not became just another exhibit.
But not so far away parties of school children were enjoying the allotment gardens. Their focus was planting for biodiversity as well as growing tasty food. It was inspiring to see their excitement and enthusiasm – valuable lessons made fun! They are learning to ‘join the dots’ linking ‘us’ to the world all around. I hope that SeeHow will soon find its way into classrooms as a small part of this process, helping encourage the next generation of gardeners.
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