Greening Grey Britain Garden

From the show

• A wall of street art, created by Sheffield urban artist Jo Peel, frames one side of the garden
• Wildlife is catered for with insect hotels and butterfly feeders
• Storm rain water is harnessed in an ornamental pool

At the garden

The garden is set in the urban context of an apartment block with balconies and small ground-floor terraces, and a larger communal or social space. The garden highlights a wide range of creative and artful approaches to sustainable garden and landscape design.
 
Key elements include ideas for growing plants in small and restricted spaces, and for integrating functional things such as bin and bike storage into a small garden. Water-sensitive design and rain-garden ideas feature strongly, and the communal garden encourages social interactions.
 
Featuring RHS Chelsea's first example of urban or street art, and an innovative, low-cost, biodiverse living wall system.
 
Sculptural and artful habitat and biodiversity structures will provide additional visual interest. Within the garden is an 'edible meeting table' that seats 8-10 people, and has fruit trees and herbs growing within it. This is the RHS 'Greening Grey Britain' garden and highlights many of the key messages of this campaign.
 
The garden is bounded by a life-size apartment block building and concrete is used in many different ways in the garden – recycled municipal paving slabs form a new sort of crazy paving and black poured concrete forms the main paths.
 
The planting scheme is colourful and naturalistic, with plants included that are familiar and fairly common so that this garden is accessible to a wide audience.