The Northern Star Show Garden: Community Spirit at RHS Tatton
Lee Burkhill: Award Winning Designer & BBC 1's Garden Rescue Presenters Official Blog
The Northern Star feature garden aims to showcase 5 very different and diverse community gardens in one stunning garden design. The RHS and BBC asked me earlier this year to be the designer of this challenging brief. To help showcase the best of northern gardens in one show garden to help encourage new gardeners. No mean feat! As I'm so passionate about upskilling and educating gardeners I jumped at the chance.
I had to carefully think of how we display these gardens without them simply looking like 5 borders stuck together. The answer came to me in the form of a star that the public could walk around, seeing each border in 360 degrees. Making them fully immersive and interactive with the very community gardeners who had planted them!
It also links nicely to the hidden stars of horticulture and gardening here in the North West of England. Watch more behind the scenes below on this design and my hand drawn and water colour design process.
The different groups each have their own border conveying their own distinct message,
which has been stylised in my garden design. The borders have been joined together with key blue signature colour that runs throughout. The garden will feature blue garden sculptures and a custom hand-built blue chevron bench at the centre representing the North Western coast and skies.
The key elements of this garden are:
This garden represents the design themes of an Islamic paradise garden. Using symmetry, water and a paired back planting palette as a way to find peace and calm in the garden.
The Black Leach allotment garden features an array of grow-your-own delights. All are suitable for small urban spaces and relatively easy to grow from seed. I'm so passionate about growing your own plants I've even grown a large number of the vegetables for this border so the community groups get the very best show stopping plants!
A place to switch off and be at peace with the world. This flower bed features rich late-flowering herbaceous perennial plants to help provide a long season of interest in the garden. These plants are also really easy to divide and split.
This wildlife-packed garden features some really interesting pollen-rich planting along with a Thorne WBC bee hive and other diverse plant specimens. Using a mix of colours to attract insects, butterflies, moths and bees.
The food forest garden shows how edibles and ornamentals along with trees can be grown side by side for a really diverse mix of gardening needs. Maximising what you can grow and ripping up the rule book with the garden design!
To link the garden together there is a central hub in the form of a chevron-shaped set of deep flower beds. Incorporating a custom hand-made wooden bench to encourage people to sit, meet and rest within the garden. A true hub for the show garden allowing guests to immerse themselves within the design. This central hub allows people to look out at each of the borders and take in the entire garden.
The central hub features blue-themed coastal plants which are drought-tolerant. I aim to show you how we can take our lead from nature and create a robust garden by allowing Mother natures influence to guide us!
The finished garden aims to show how horticulture can empower local communities and bring
them together. Allowing the volunteers themselves to plant the garden and learn skills along the way!
Part of the brief that was super exciting for me was to be able to train the community garden volunteers to plant up their own parts of the design. Usually, a garden designer and planting team do this, but I want to break the rules and help upskill these fantastic gardeners with show garden planting skills. What's even better is all the plants from their respective borders go back to the community gardens after the show. This is a zero waste garden!
We held a mentoring day at RHS Bridgewater where I ran a workshop to explain to the communities how the show garden world works, and how they will need to plant and also ran them through each of their borders showing what plants had been selected for their themes.
This is no ordinary show garden, where you stand behind a rope to admire it. This is an immersive feature garden that the public can walk around and even sit in! Best of all the entire garden is being rehomed after the show to the community gardeners who helped install it.
Let's take a closer look at what separates this garden from other show gardens I've designed in the past.
Ask any designer and growing your own plants strikes terror to most designers. Ensuring they are perfect, ready to flower on time and having the space to grow them can be prohibitive. This is why so often we source our show garden plants from key nurseries around the UK.
However, with this show garden, there are a number of unusual key plants that I decided to grow myself. For the allotment garden and the Food Forest, I knew that growing the vegetables myself from seed would get the best results. So that's what I have done. A lot of hard work but I think the community gardens will be glad of the wonderful speciments I've got planned for their planting schemes!
Everedge has supplied the wonderful steel border edging to bring a crisp line to the garden. It also makes an excellent lawn edge for gardens to reduce maintenance and ensure flower beds stay crisp and neat! Read more about why I've chosen everedge for lawn edging here.
Thorne supplied the WBC bee hive at cost price to showcase how urban gardens can offer a refuge for bees and beginner beekeepers alike!
Gardening is a really diverse practice, whether that’s based on budget, plants or location. But it is for everyone, so this is representing all sorts of diverse gardens. It’s a tricky task – trying to blend them together and showcase the best of them so that everyone gets an equal display for the design. Hopefully, we will show other new gardeners that there is a place for them and that there is a style for everyone with this garden!
Lex Falleyn, show manager for RHS Tatton Park, said: “Our goal for RHS Flower Show
Tatton Park 2023 was to shine a light on local talent and community causes. We have
worked closely with the Bridgewater community outreach team to identify a broad range of
communities that are gardening for good.
We are thrilled with the way Lee has pulled his ideas together and can’t wait to share the garden and stories with visitors in July.”
The collaboration is the latest joint project by the RHS and BBC North West Tonight for RHS Flower Show Tatton Park.
Coming soon!
About RHS Flower Show Tatton Park (19 – 23 July 2023):
Wednesday: RHS Members’ Day, 10am – 5pm
Thursday – Saturday: 10am – 5pm
Sunday: 10am – 5pm (sell off of displays begins at 4pm)
I'm thrilled to bits to be able to merge garden design with community gardening this year at RHS Tatton. Breaking down the barriers between show gardens and the public. This interactive space will allow people to fully explore the garden's different elements up close and personal. It also enables the community gardeners to chat with the public about their work and plant choices. Spreading more gardening knowledge far and wide.
The icing on the cake is the fact I've designed this with no hard landscaping.It's entirely soft landscaped meaning that any gardener, whether a beginner or pro, can achieve something similar in their own gardens. Putting plants and our carbon foot print first. So fingers crossed its a hit with the crowds!
Don’t forget you can always visit my Youtube channel, for more gardening guides. You can also check out my Tweet, Facebook or Instagram for more garden help and tips.
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