RHS - Sandringham Flower Show

After months of planning we arrived at the inaugural RHS Sandringham Flower Show to build our first ever long border; The Habitat Garden, designed to demonstrate how gardens can include essential habitats (which are in short supply in our countryside) while being beautiful places you would want to spend time.

The first 3 long and hot days were dedicated to the build and saw the dead wood structure be installed and the 350 plants get planted in a meadow style, each one pruned, positioned and planted perfectly. Judging day followed which involved a hurried 30-minute check over everything and a nervous 7 hour wait while the team of RHS judges inspected every detail and deliberated among themselves. The results were announced at 3pm that day and we were over the moon to receive a gold medal for the habitat garden, an achievement made even greater as the first RHS show garden to ever include the controversial ragwort (a biodiversity super plant!)

The show opened the following day and during the following five days we spoke to thousands of people discussing caterpillar food plants, the benefits of ragwort, drought tolerant planting and the role deadwood play as habitat, along with many other lovely conversations with people.

Arit Anderson and the Gardeners World team, spent some time filming by the border, sharing the benefits of deadwood as habitat, role ragwort and other caterpillar food plants plays

While the days were long and the whole experience felt like a marathon we came away exceptionally proud of what we had created and blown away by the publics opinions around planting in a more sustainable and biodiverse way, the enthusiasm shown gives us real hope for the future.

We have put more information about the design of The Habitat Garden on our portfolio page with a link to receive the full planting list.

On day 2 the steady flow of people was interrupted by Arit Anderson and the Gardeners World team, spent some time filming by the border, sharing the benefits of deadwood as habitat, role ragwort and other caterpillar food plants plays with their viewers which aired on the program the following Friday.