RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2018

In 2018 we created a show garden for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show with celebrated landscape and garden designer Nic Howard. Co-sponsored by global real estate services provider Savills, the design featured a series of bronze and oxidised steel screens which produced a metaphorical wormhole through time. The garden tells the story of mankind’s evolving relationship with nature, and the emotional and intellectual development of human culture.

Design details

The crisp geometric patterns in the series of garden screens each had their own story to tell within the narrative of the garden design. Each stage brought you closer to our pivotal Aeon sculpture. Bold, defiant and massive, this Verdigris bronze sculpture has at its heart 256 gold-leaf aluminium spikes crafted into an exploding nucleus, which represents the first and last moment of creation.

The planting starts as freeform and naturalistic with Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’ and Briza media but becomes more formal and controlled the further into the garden you go, with the addition of Lupins, Lupinus ‘West Country Persian Slipper’ and Digitalis ‘Sutton’s Apricot’.

The bronze Bench of Contemplation offered a space near the garden to pause and think. Wrought out of bronze strips representing human thought and DNA, this conversation piece is a nod to the ‘Age of Enlightenment’. The design reminds us to remain conscious of the past while setting aspirations for the future.