The 2023 RHS Iconic Horticultural Hero on the thinking behind her multi-habitat design for this year’s Hampton Court Garden Festival
Just before Christmas, Clare Matterson, director general of the RHS, wrote to ask if I would be RHS Hampton Court’s Iconic Horticultural Hero for 2023, which was both shocking and flattering in equal measure!
Because of that, I was able to design a garden for the Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival. It’s a privilege, but it’s also the first time I’ve designed a garden since 1999, so it’s been very hard work. It’s a huge space, 375 square metres, and when I walked it out for the first time I was astonished. When you’re creating a show garden, it’s a very different proposition to a real garden, and it has to perform at a specific time.
Its ethos is twofold. On the one hand it’s about going with the flow and consulting nature about the kind of conditions you’ve got and being attuned to the plants that thrive there. The garden is divided into six habitats: wetland, woodland, hedgerow, meadow, seaside and a vegetable patch. They flow together with no physical divisions. It’s quite a challenge when on one side you’ve got a boggy garden and then on the other side you’ve got a dry, well-drained area.
The other element is ‘grow your own’. The design emphasises the plants people can grow and propagate themselves, and to that end there’s a greenhouse outside
