Volunteering at Hampton Court Palace Flower Show The WWF Garden in the making

I was very lucky to be able to help out at Hampton Court Flower Show last week. My friend Fiona Stephenson, who I worked with at the beginning of my Garden Design career, has designed the World Wildlife Fund garden this year and I volunteered to help out with the planting.  I thought you might like to see some of the pictures I took whilst the garden was in the making…

Fiona (left) and Catherine (a volunteer)

Fiona has attempted to recreate the magic of a chalk stream and has based the garden on a stretch of the River Itchen in Hampshire.  I think she has totally managed to capture the essence of the chalk stream habitat – it’s as though a piece of the countryside has been picked up and moved to the grounds of Hampton Court!

The show garden stream flows from the chalk wall at the back of the garden to the rustic gate at the front where it empties into an enormous plughole.   The garden aims to draw attention to the plight of Britains over-extracted rivers and the plughole is there to get the point across.

Fiona and I agreed that it was quite a challenge to create a show garden that is designed to represent the natural environment as the planting needs to be of a high standard if the garden is to be awarded a medal, but it also needs to be quite wild if it is to truly represent the habitat that it is based upon.

Fiona’s last show garden at Hampton Court “Oak Tree Lying in State” was awarded a Gold medal and I am keeping everything crossed that she is awarded another for her garden this year as it was looking truly fabulous by the time I left on Thursday afternoon.  It takes a lot of hard work and creative vision to create a gold medal garden but it’s fun too…

…and great to work in a team where everyone is working towards the same goal…

If you are going to Hampton Court next week do make sure you check out the WWF garden, I’d be really interested to hear what you think.