Chelsea celebrated RHS Bridgewater

Tom Stuart-Smith brought a glimpse of RHS Bridgewater to the world's most famous flower show

The creation of RHS Bridgewater was celebrated at the 2019 RHS Chelsea Flower Show with a specially-dedicated garden.
 
Designed by award-winning landscape architect, Tom Stuart-Smith (who is also heading up the RHS Bridgewater project in Salford) and supported by Visit Britain, the RHS Bridgewater Garden was the largest garden at Chelsea 2019 and was designed as a collage of the proposed space around the new Welcome building at Bridgewater.
 
The RHS Bridgewater Garden was located on the Triangle and was fully accessible to the public. The space was subdivided by paths, with the planting being made up of three distinct components.

Planting in the garden

A canopy was created by a group of Cornus kousa, while seven clipped domes of Beech beneath provided a sculptural counterpoint to the rest of the planting.
 
The remainder of the planting was comprised of an extensive perennial meadow, which gave some feeling of the impressive scale of RHS Garden Bridgewater and includes many plants that flower later in the year.
 
There were varieties adapted to the damp mossy soils of Bridgewater – including moisture-loving plants like Iris siberica, Rodgersia and Darmera.
 
The entire RHS Chelsea garden is being relocated and reconfigured at RHS Bridgewater after the show.
 
Sue Biggs, RHS Director General, said: “Of course working with Tom was always going to be remarkable and we knew he would deliver an extremely special master plan for the RHS’s new fifth garden, but he has surpassed even our greatest expectations with the impressive, beautiful, fresh, contemporary and inclusive designs he’s come up with.
 
“Through RHS Chelsea we’ll be able to give the world a taste of what this extraordinary new RHS Garden will be like when it opens in 2021, and we hope to engage even more people with its development. 

"We are so happy to have already made so many new friends and supporters in the Salford area, and also to those who have been wonderful enough to donate towards the creation of the garden, especially the Garfield Weston Foundation.”
 
Tom Stuart-Smith said:  “I thought I would never 'do another Chelsea' but this is too wonderful an opportunity; to publicise the extraordinary project at RHS Bridgewater that I'm so proud to be a part of.”

See the Chelsea gardens