RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2021 30 August 2022/by Marketing

Chelsea Flower Show 2021

The RHS Chelsea Flower Show was back, with an unfamiliar September date, and we were delighted be work with a number of designers at the world’s most prestigious flower show.

Artisan Garden

Guide Dogs’ 90th Anniversary Garden

In celebration of 90 years of British guide dog partnerships, the Grey Gardeners (Adam Woolcott and Jonathan Smith) created an emotive wildflower garden. Ferns and dark foliage plants contrasted with colourful meadow planting, of predominantly British native species, including our Practical Native Mix Instant Hedge. With its dog-friendly planting, this was a striking and memorable garden that won a Silver Medal Winner

Container Gardens

This new category, for newly qualified Garden Designers, was mentored by multi award-winning garden designer Paul Hervey Brookes. Each garden is just 4m x 3m, enclosed by Practical Beech Instant Hedge, a gravel or slate floor and include repurposed IBC containers.

The Hot Tin Roof Garden designed by Ellie Edkins was inspired by a life lived by the beach, but designed for an urban area.

Pop Street Garden by John McPherson created a vibrant, playful garden, inspired by pop art and jump-starting the transition from ‘lockdown to on-the-town’.

The IBC Pocket Forest designed by Sara Edwards was reminiscent of Milan’s Bosco Verticale, an urban pocket forest and haven for wildlife.

A Tranquil Space in the City by Japanese designer Mika Misawa evoked a sense of tranquillity, an autumn seasonal celebration and a way of contemplating life.

The Stolen Soul Garden from Anna Dabrowska-Jaudi where human emotions were given form in this garden, which seeks to draw attention to ‘invisible’ mental health issues.

Great Pavilion

Dave Green created the Mains2Rains installation in the discovery zone inside the Great Pavilion about water management in gardens. We have supplied Practical Native Mix Instant Hedge plus individual Thuja plants.

Talk to our Horticultural team about how Practical Instant Hedge™ could be right for your own garden.

Simply email us on [email protected]

RHS Flower Show Tatton Park 2021 30 August 2022/by Marketing

RHS Flower Shows 2021

Tatton Park in Knutsford, Cheshire is a lovely family day out, full of colourful gardening inspiration.

Every year, Practicality Brown supports Young Designer Gardens at the Tatton Park Garden Show. This is a category for those hoping to launch their careers in design, and showcases some of the promising college graduates. The designers have interpreted the theme of health and wellbeing into their ideas. Participants compete for RHS title “Young Designer of the Year”.

It’s Okay Not To Be Okay

James Smith has created a garden that draws attention to the stigma associated with mental ill health and the difficulties that men face in coping with such issues. This garden represents that ’it’s ok not to be ok’.

The garden is surrounded by barriers but beyond these are an open space in which people can sit in privacy, enveloped by planting and share the opportunity to speak and be heard in an environment that is supportive. The destination of the garden’s users reveals itself as progress is made through the space and represents a significant milestone in achievement. The Hornbeam Practical Instant Hedge forms an integral part of James’s concept design

Rehearse Garden

Emilie Bausager has designed the Rehearse Garden for the Shooting Star Children’s Hospices. It’s for a family of classical musicians living in a city. By adopting a greener lifestyle and travelling by bike or public transport, the family can transform an existing driveway between house and street. This green oasis that will support wildlife and provide space for the family to enjoy.

It is a calming courtyard in which each element is placed to reflect the sounds of musical instruments in a visual form. It features a circular, meandering route with copper-clad water features that bring natural sound to the garden.

Emilie chose Beech Practical Instant Hedge to enhance the courtyard effect of the design.

We also regularly work with established garden designers and this year we are working with Leon Davis on his design for the Back to Back Garden category.

Garden of Resilience

Leon Davis has created the Garden of Resilience for United Utilities. With increasing periods of extreme wet and dry weather likely in the future, garden spaces need to be more climate resilient. This will require a much more considered approach in how we look after and care for our outdoor spaces.

The Garden provides practical and creative ideas on how water can be managed, conserved and reused. Ideas include an attractive rainwater-harvesting system, a permeable path which feeds water to a sunken rain garden. The planting is resilient to prolonged spells of dry and wet weather and includes Amelanchier lamarckii, self-seeding perennials and our Carpinus betulus (Hornbeam) Practical Instant Hedge.

Talk to our Horticultural team about how Practical Instant Hedge™ could be right for your own show garden. Simply email us on [email protected]

RHS Hampton Court Garden Festival 2021 25 August 2022/by Marketing

Return to RHS Flower Shows

RHS Flower Shows made a welcome return to the schedule in July 2021. First on the agenda was The Hampton Court Garden Festival which is the world’s largest flower show, set in the stunning grounds of the Historic Royal Palace in Richmond upon Thames.

Every year, talented garden designers choose our Instant Hedge as an integral part of their concept, forming an important green backdrop or as part of the structure within the design itself. At this year’s RHS Hampton Court Show, we provided quality products for two designers.

Message in a Bottle

Tracy Foster designed this Global Impact Garden for Canal & River Trust.

This conceptual garden represented a discarded bottle floating towards the shore. It’s not a depressing piece of pollution, rather, it has a bright and appealing garden growing inside it. Its message was simple; we can all take action to help prevent plastic pollution, in our own gardens, urban green spaces and around our canals and rivers. Surrounding the bottle was a sea of graceful flax plants that represent plants which are natural alternatives to plastic. We supplied individual shrubs as part of the bottle garden.

The Communication Garden

Amelia Bouquet’s Lifestyle Garden, in support of Mental Health UK, was a living, growing symbolic refuge.

The Communication Garden is a place to meet, talk, listen and to highlight the importance of face-to-face communication for our mental wellbeing. The rustic woodland and native trees provide a protective canopy. Topiary balls symbolise ordered, rigid thoughts. Other shrubs represent a mindset that is less inhibited and more relaxed and is reinforced with bursts of colour.

Practical Instant Native Mix Hedge was used as a backdrop to Amelia’s garden.

Both Garden Designers visited us to see the hedge growing in our nursery in Iver, Bucks and to select the exact specimen and height they want for their individual designs.

Talk to our Horticultural team about how Practical Instant Hedge™ could be right for your own show garden. Simply email us on [email protected]

RHS Tatton Park 2019 31 July 2019/by Marketing

RHS Tatton Park 2019

RHS gives young garden designers the chance to kick start their careers and gain invaluable exposure at a prestigious RHS Show with its Young Designer Competition, now in its 11th year. This year, four young designers created gardens at the RHS Tatton Park Flower Show.

Practicality Brown like to support young designers, see project post on Hampton Court for the gardens we were involved with this year. At Tatton Park, we supplied our elegant Portuguese Laurel Practical Instant Hedge for a garden in the Young Designers category. Grown here at our nursery in Iver, we have taken great care with these instant hedging solutions to supply a premium quality product, as befits a Show Garden.

The Phytosanctuary Garden

Gold medal winner and Young Designer of the Year 2019

This beautiful garden was designed by Kristian Reay and is planted with a Mediterranean theme to raise awareness of Xylella fastidiosa disease that poses a threat to many of our much-loved plants.

At first glance, this garden is a beautiful and desirable space awash with ornamental grasses and a palette of fragrant perennials evocative of the Mediterranean. But look beyond its fragile beauty and a darker message is revealed – the growing threat of the deadly plant disease.

At the centre of the garden is a graceful Olea europaea, the olive tree that has been devastated by the disease throughout southern Europe.

Similarly, the Lavandula (lavender), and Prunus lusitanica hedge are also ‘at-risk’ species that have been severely affected by Xylella. We supplied the Practical Portuguese Laurel Instant Hedge, which in integral to this statement garden.

The art designed on the back wall depicts Xylella. The circle represents xylem, while Xylella can be seen inside. It shows how Xylella multiplies and restricts water flow within the xylem, threatening the plant.

Kristian was announced as the winner of the Young Designer of the year 2019 at the RHS Flower Show Tatton Park and will also take home an RHS Gold medal for his thoughtful design. Speaking ahead of the competition, Kristian said: “As a Young Designer I’m deeply concerned about the risk from plant diseases like Xylella to our gardens and landscapes, so I think this is a really important topic to discuss at the show.

“I’ve included at-risk garden favourites like lavender in the planting to highlight the impact the disease could have if these plants were to vanish.”

The role of gardeners and the scientific community in responding to the threat posed by Xylella is explored in a display describing the BRIGIT project and the Defra and Animal and Plant Health Agency’s Don’t Risk It! campaign.

Congratulations to Kristian, a Gold medal winner and now Best Young Designer!

Links

RHS Shows

The Phytosanctuary Garden

Practical Instant Hedge

Kristian Reay

BBC coverage

RHS Hampton Court Garden Festival 2024 3 July 2024/in Flower Shows, News /by Marketing

RHS Show Gardens at Hampton Court Garden Festival 2-7 July 2024

RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival is the world’s largest flower show, stretching over 31 acres and attracting around 120,000 visitors. It is a celebration of gardening set in the historic grounds of Hampton Court Palace within easy reach of central London.

Practicality Brown are delighted to support Garden Designers at the event again this year. There is a real variety of ideas at the 2024 festival, bringing gardening traditions of other countries to the classically British setting of Hampton Court Palace,

Show Garden

We have supplied Yew Practical Instant Hedge™ and Pine trees for Sadie May Stowell’s Oregon Show Garden. This showcases the natural beauty of the state of Oregon, including wildflower planting, natural crisp clear waterfalls and forest planting. The planting is natural in appearance and focuses on pollinating plants and flowers.

Oregon Show Garden design by Sadie May Stowell

Get Started Gardens

The “Get Started Gardens” category aims to inspire beginner gardeners and spark ideas that can be achieved at their own home. We supported two Garden Designers in this section, both of which were awarded a Silver Gilt medal:

A Four Seasons Sanctuary created by Tim Jennings included our Hornbeam Elements and Purple Beech Practical Instant Hedge™. Combining striking modern design features with traditional materials. With naturalistic ‘drift’ planting, this is a garden to be enjoyed by humans and wildlife alike. This garden has a strong stylish aesthetic that also provides the natural, seasonal wild space to sustain a diverse kaleidoscope of life

Four Season Sanctuary designed by Tim Jennings featuring Hornbeam Elements and Purple Beech Practical Instant Hedge

Four Season Sanctuary Garden designed by Tim Jennings

Lastly, Melanie Hick used our Elaeagnus evergreen screens for her award-winning Climate Forward Garden. A front garden re-imagined for our changing environment with style and sustainability front and centre. It is influenced by Australian garden design. It has evolved to cope with the demands of harsh climate conditions like drought and flooding rains.

Climate Forward Garden designed by Melanie Hick

Come and visit our nursery in Iver, Bucks and talk to our Horticultural team about your own garden. Call us on 01753 652022. You can also email us at [email protected]. Or browse our website for specimen trees and instant hedges.

RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2024 30 May 2024/in Flower Shows, News /by Marketing

RHS Exhibits

This year, our contribution to RHS Chelsea Flower Show took us inside the Great Pavilion, for two gardens designed for special Royal Horticultural Society exhibits and a special showground installation sponsored by Saatchi.

All About Hedges

This Discovery Zone feature, designed by Dave Green with RHS Science showcased the importance of hedges as part of urban and suburban landscapes. Practicality Brown supplied Yew, Privet, Elaeagnus, Portuguese Laurel and Griselinia from our Practical Instant Hedge™ range for this special exhibit.

RHS x UBS A day on the nursery

This Feature Garden in the middle of the Great Pavilion, was sponsored by UBS and designed by Emma Tipping. It gave visitors an immersive experience of being in a plant nursery. We supplied Practical Instant Native Mix Hedge™ that surrounds the exhibit. The current mix in this very wildlife friendly hedge is Hawthorn, Hornbeam, Hazel, Blackthorn and Common Privet.

Abeba Esse

This showground installation, sponsored by Saatchi Gallery, by Zak Ové and Dave Green depicts a Black Diasporic journey, with planting representing Africa, the Caribbean, and the UK. The garden encourages important conversations about the themes. We supplied Practical Instant Native Mix Hedge™ as a back drop to the exhibit and the yew at the front.

Come and visit our nursery in Iver, Bucks and talk to our Horticultural team about your own garden. Call us on 01753 652022. You can also email us at [email protected]. Or browse our website for specimen trees and instant hedges.

RHS Summer Shows 8 August 2022/in News, RHS Shows /by Marketing

Summer Flower Festivals 2022

Following on from a successful Chelsea Flower Show, the RHS hosted two events in July, which also featured Practical Instant Hedge™ at Hampton Court Garden Festival and Flower Show Tatton Park.

RHS Hampton Court Garden Festival

This event is the world’s largest flower show, full of colour and wonderful summer gardens of inspiration. It is set in the stunning grounds of the Historic Royal Palace in Richmond upon Thames

Award-winning garden designer, Dave Green created a beautiful Feature Garden at this year’s show. The RHS Forest Bathing Garden drew on a purposeful practice of spending time under the canopy of trees surrounded by nature to relax and de-stress, which can decrease both anxiety and depression.

Forest bathing often takes place with a guide and focuses on exploring the natural environment using the senses (sight, sound, touch and smell) to create mindfulness awareness. The garden was designed to for all the sense, including sight, sound and aroma.

We are delighted to have supplied Practical Native Mix Instant Hedge for this beautiful, restful garden.

You can find out more on the RHS website, and watch highlights of Hampton Court Garden Festival in a BBC Gardeners’ World special programme.

RHS Flower Show Tatton Park

Celebrating colour, creativity, community and the positive power of plants and flowers, RHS Flower Show brings the joy of gardening to the historic grounds of Tatton Park.

Crowned at the show, RHS Young Designer of the Year Will Scholey created the Working From Home Garden which was a perfect working environment, while reducing the homeowner’s carbon footprint. The ‘daily commute’ was a winding gravel path through native meadow planting with multi-stemmed trees. There was plenty of native wildlife-friendly planting including our Practical Native Mix Instant Hedge, from our range of Deciduous Instant Hedges. Will received a Silver-Gilt award for this garden, as well as his title.

Talk to our Horticultural team about how Practical Instant Hedge™ could be right for your own garden.

RHS Tatton Park 2019 19 July 2019/in Events, Flower Shows, RHS Shows /by Marketing

Young Garden Designers at RHS Tatton Park

RHS gives young garden designers the chance to kick start their careers and gain invaluable exposure at a prestigious RHS Show with its Young Designer Competition, now in its 11th year. This year, four young designers created gardens at the RHS Tatton Park Flower Show.

Practicality Brown like to support young designers, see blog post on Hampton Court for the garden we were involved with this year. At Tatton Park, we supplied our elegant Portuguese Laurel Practical Instant Hedge for a garden in the Young Designers category. Grown here at our nursery in Iver, we have taken great care with these instant hedging solutions to supply a premium quality product, as befits a Show Garden.

The Phytosanctuary Garden

Gold medal winner and Young Designer of the Year 2019

Our Practical Instant Hedge on Kristian Reay’s Phytosanctuary Garden