* I was invited to this year’s Gardeners’ World Live and provided with a pair of tickets to the show, therefore all my posts will be marked as 'Ad’ though as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.
Knowing where to start with my individual garden appreciation posts from this year’s show was quite the challenge. I shared my highlights from around the show, and I expect you thought I’d start by sharing either the ‘Best in Show’ Where there’s water, there’s life garden or Nick Bailey’s Plant-based garden, but in fact I’ve chosen neither of of those (though they are on my list to share).
I have as you can see from the title of this post chosen to start with The ‘New’ Build garden, as it was more than you’d expect it to be, and in fact we’ve been lucky with our new build garden being more than we expected it to be too.
This garden was designed by brother and sister designers, Henry and Lucie Ponsford at Mimosa Design. Their garden transforms new build home gardens into lush, sustainable retreats by blending repurposed waste materials with ancient crafts, and offering luxury without compromise.
Knowing this I was still quite surprised to see an hot tub, albeit an eco one, in the garden alongside the handcrafted hut, but as the blurb on the board said it’s purpose is to ‘show that style and sustainability can coexist.’
I’m all for that.
They have aimed to reduce landfill impact by using intelligent and creative solutions, such as fast-install permeable paving and soil-relocating gabions - you’ll recall I was rather taken with these.
But it wasn’t just the angular gabions that I liked in this garden - though filling them with old paving slabs stacked on an angle was a great idea and a great way to bring even more texture into the space. There was another use for old paving slabs, that might not have been immediately apparent.
The triangular sections in the paths were also old paving slabs cut into narrower strips then inserted into the permeable path on their ends to give this effect. Simple (in design if not necessarily to replicate), but very effective, don’t you think?
There’s gutters at ground level as attractive solutions to channel and gather water - something we all probably need to do more of, and with the inclusion of astrantias in the planting I was always going to stop by to learn more about the garden.
I can see how the gutters at ground level could work and bring both calmness and a practical solution to the garden, but I’m still in two minds about water elements in gardens and the need for keeping them clean easily. I’m all for water storage though, as these past few weeks (and actually months) has shown, we need to do more to conserve rainwater when it comes.
And those angular gabions amongst all of the other angles are designed to reflect a landscape on a precipice, but still allow the garden to become a sanctuary for people, water and plants. And through their designs they’ve demonstrated that new builds can connect us more deeply to nature than you’d think, and don’t have to be the standard ‘square of grass’ left by the developer (if you’re lucky).
And I agree, they’ve definitely shown that style and sustainability can work together. The permeable walkways were something we spoke to the garden representatives about, and while I’m keen to have something permeable we don’t think these are for us. In this garden they’ve added the wooden cobbles in ‘high traffic’ areas as the surrounding surface could be muddier than you’d like after rainfall, something to consider as I definitely don’t want muddy footprints in the house.
* With thanks to Gardeners’ World for inviting me to Gardeners’ World Live, it was quite a show! I’ll be sharing more from my visit to this year’s show throughout the year - I hope you enjoy them as much as I did the show.
