RHS Chelsea 2024 to feature its first-ever 'almost entirely' repurposed garden
A garden at this year's RHS Chelsea Flower Show is to be created almost entirely out of repurposed materials.
In a first for the world's most prestigious horticultural event, award-winning designer Darryl Moore of Cityscapes will be repurposing key elements from RHS Chelsea Show Gardens dating back as far as 2010.
Aptly called RHS Chelsea Repurposed, the Feature Garden will highlight all the creative ways to reuse and recycle materials in garden design.
So what’s being repurposed? A series of corten steel columns which appeared in Andy Sturgeon’s 2010 The Daily Telegraph Garden; Tom Massey’s fountain and concrete benches from his 2018 The Lemon Tree Trust Garden; the distinctive steel fins from Andy Sturgeon’s 2016 The Daily Telegraph Garden, and reclaimed scaffold boards and timber from Cityscapes' 2022 St Mungo’s Putting Down Roots Garden.
But it doesn’t stop there. Drought-tolerant plants, including grasses and local wildflowers, are being planted in crushed concrete and sand salvaged from demolished buildings.
'The world’s resources are limited. In order to build a sustainable and adaptive future in response to the challenges we face from the climate and biodiversity crisis, we need to look at ways to reuse and recycle materials we already have,' says Darryl, designer and director of Cityscapes. 'At Cityscapes we’ve been reusing materials from RHS Shows for a decade, so I’m always on the lookout for things that might work well in future designs. I hope this garden will encourage more designers and visitors to do the same.'
There are lots of firsts happening at Chelsea Flower Show 2024, including the implementation of a new Green Garden Audit across the Show Gardens and Sanctuary Gardens to reduce their carbon footprint and environmental impact. The RHS is also introducing a new Environmental Innovation Award, open to all gardens who have been through the Green Garden Audit.
Promising to be the most sustainable show yet, all gardens at RHS Chelsea also have to live on in some form after the show, whether they're relocated, broken down and used for a number of different projects, or repurposed in parts.
After RHS Chelsea 2024, 'every element of RHS Chelsea Repurposed will go on to enjoy new lives that continue to benefit both people and wildlife,' say the RHS.
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show, sponsored by The Newt in Somerset, takes place 21st-25th May 2024. Visit rhs.org.uk for tickets.
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