The Florence Nightingale Garden at Chelsea 2021 has taken on a whole new meaning
Designer Robert Myers has been thinking about the creation of his upcoming Chelsea Flower Show 2021 Show Garden for quite a while now. Country Living interviewed Robert ahead of the autumn show.
“We started working on The Florence Nightingale Garden – A Celebration of Modern Nursing early in 2019 for the 2020 show that was cancelled,” he admits to CL. “We thought it was great to have such a nice long lead-in. Little did we know how long the lead-in was going to be!”
The starting point for the garden was the 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, the woman who is remembered as the founder of modern nursing as well as a social reformer and statistician. She became famous in her time as ‘The Lady of the Lamp’, training other nurses and tending to wounded soldiers during the Crimean War. As well as honouring her, the design also needed to symbolise a celebration of modern nursing.
“Of course now, with the pandemic, the idea has taken on a whole new relevance and significance – it would always be a great time to celebrate nursing, but it’s even more appropriate to be doing it now,” Robert tells Country Living.
Sponsor, The Burdett Trust for Nursing, had approached the RHS about doing a show garden on these themes, and the RHS team suggested a few designers, of which Robert was one, and he and his team were chosen following an interview where they presented their design ideas for the space.
“When we went to the interview, we had some scruffy sketches and initial ideas on the sort of themes and narratives that we hoped to incorporate. We had gone to the Florence Nightingale Museum and did research beforehand, so we were able to make reference to some of her own ideas about hospital design, and knew we wanted the garden to represent a hospital courtyard. That design that we first presented is very close to what we are getting ready to build now,” Robert explains.
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Through his research, Robert became quite a fan of this extraordinary woman. “When you think of Florence Nightingale, you think about ‘The Lady of the Lamp’ and what we all learn about at school, but what was really interesting, delving into her life and story, is all she did after she came back from Crimea, like advocating for healthcare reform, and ideas around sanitation.
"Florence Nightingale was a great statistician and used data to make decisions and understand infection control, which is so relevant now. In fact, she was one of the first people to talk about hand washing as a method of controlling the spread of infection. What she did at that time as an upper-class Victorian woman was amazing.”
The Florence Nightingale Garden – A Celebration of Modern Nursing: Design features
The design imagines hospital wards separated into pavilions around open spaces, an idea that came from Florence and was also about controlling infection spread. The team was very taken with her ideas about the need for light, fresh air, clean water, views of plants and open space, and the importance of green spaces for recovery and well-being. “It all came together nicely around this idea for a restorative garden space within a healthcare setting.”
The concept is that you view the courtyard as if stepping out into it from inside the hospital building. “It’s an immersive space, with lots of planting, and a pergola that runs over the top and wraps around to create almost a cloister walk. There’s also a reflecting pool at the back, and space to walk around and sit on different routes around the garden.”
The dominant element of the garden is that large pergola, made from cross-laminated timber (CLT), created by gluing thin sheets of timber together to make a very strong but light material that holds itself up. The pergola has a slatted structure and this in combination with the material has allowed Robert to create a design with sinuous shapes, long spans and even cantilevered sections. “It almost floats above the garden – there’s lightness to it you wouldn’t get with traditional timber construction.”
Design features:
inspired by hospital wards separated into pavilions
a restorative garden space
a large pergola made from cross-laminated timber
paths winding through plants
large feature plant pots
lantern lights
seating
water pool
bronze facsimiles of The Florence Nightingale Nursing Badge
Florence-inspired graphics
two sets of glass windows with images of Florence
plants include ferns, ornamental grasses, foxglove seed heads, Echinacea, and giant rhubarb Rheum
trees include Heptacodium miconioides
The paths that wind through the planting below are made from dark handmade bricks, and they lead around, past places to sit and large feature pots, as well as lantern lights meant to reference Florence’s lamp, to the pool of water at the back. Along the way, there are small bronze facsimiles of The Florence Nightingale Nursing Badge, which nurses from Florence’s nursing school receive when they qualify, set into the paving.
Robert also wanted to bring in elements of Florence’s early life, such as her childhood pressed flower collection, and her ferocious letter-writing habit later in life, so these have been reproduced as graphics that are printed on the CLT boundary walls of the garden, “almost like graffiti”.
As well as this, there are two sets of glass windows that feature images of Florence. “They are set behind a layer of frosted acrylic, which gives a slightly ghostly image that you only see when you stand in front of them. On one window there is the famous picture of her in Crimea with her lamp; and on the other there’s a lesser-known photo of her in her garden in Hampshire in a restful pose.”
The planting features ferns and ornamental grasses as well as seedheads of Florence’s favourite flower, the foxglove, and late-season perennials such as Echinacea, and giant rhubarb Rheum. The scheme is given some structure with trees including Heptacodium miconioides, which has scented flowers in September, and clipped mounds of yew. There will also be plants Florence featured in her pressed flower collection, and those known for their medicinal uses.
What will happen to The Florence Nightingale Garden – A Celebration of Modern Nursing after Chelsea 2021?
After the show, the garden will be rebuilt at St Thomas’s Hospital in London. “This is amazing, because that was where Florence established her nursing school,” Robert says. “It's great to be relocating it and that the hospital are so enthusiastic about having it as a permanent space, which will be restorative for both staff and patients.”
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