We’ve sponsored Tatton’s ‘Sensory Long Border’ designs

We’re sponsoring five of the ‘Sensory Long Border’ designs at the Royal Horticultural Society’s (RHS) Flower Show at Tatton Park this year (July 19-23, 2023).

Many of the designs have been put together by final year Landscape Architect students from the University of Gloucestershire.

Ian Wright, our Commercial Sales Director, explains: “The students visited us last year when we put on an open day for them. Then, earlier this year, they got in touch again to share their ideas for their show designs. We invited them to come in and select plants to use and we’re delighted with the results.

Exciting opportunity

“The Sensory Long Border offers an exciting opportunity for designers, gardeners and horticultural students to showcase their creativity, inspire visitors and potentially earn a prestigious RHS medal too.

“One of the designers, Sarah Marsh, had a chat with us when she visited and she explained that the plants from her group design, with Shereen Khatoon-Jaan Din and Imogen Reeves, which is called ‘Staying in touch with the garden’, will be donated to the Hospice of the Good Shepherd in Chester after the show.”

Sensory experience

‘Staying in touch with the garden’ has been created to engage every generation in a sensory experience and to inspire and show families just how everyone can use the garden together at home.

It’s hoped younger visitors will be attracted to the playful forms in the border, including the dynamic nature of grasses, as well as a melodious colour gradient sweeping along the border, running from orange to purple.

The sense of touch will be further engaged through the abacus trail, which weaves between tactile, edible and scented edging plants.

Really insightful

Sarah says: “The reason we wanted to use plants from Wyevale Nurseries is that during our second year studying landscape architecture, Wyevale treated us to a day out at their nursery, they showed us around, shared lots of valuable information and gave us the opportunity to put into practice a lot of what we had learned in our lectures.

“Being able to physically see how many plants fit into a square metre was really insightful. In our third year, we were able to apply this information to our RHS long-border submission and now we have been successful, it will be great to showcase Wyevale’s plants at the 2023 RHS Tatton Show too.”

Other submissions

As well as Sarah and her group, among the other successful garden submissions and students taking part that we’ve sponsored are:

• A Pocket of Peace – designed by Daniel March, Hallie Abbott Trangmar & Adam Rowley
• The Garden of Vivacity – designed by Anne Watson, Caitlin Lewis & Una Nolan

• Coastal Whisper – designed by Mia Thompstone, Joseph Parker & Henry Monnington

Ian adds: “There is another entry in this section called ‘Forager’s Haven’ by David Cockburn and James Hill, this is not part of the University of Gloucestershire group, but we’re delighted to have also supplied some plants for this one too.