Behind the scenes of our first RHS show
We were thrilled to be picked to design a sensory pocket garden at the 2023 RHS Hampton Court Palace show. There were a few stressful moments along the way, but overall it was a fantastic experience.
Our sensory pocket garden was just in front of the Floral Marquee
Having our design selected
The sensory pocket planting areas were new for the 2023 Hampton Court show and we saw a callout on the RHS website for applications. The brief for the pocket gardens was ‘sensory’ – to be interpreted by the designer. Our design focused on the sense of sound, with lots of plants that would attracting buzzing pollinators, rustle in the wind and have rattling seedheads. The judges liked our design and we were very excited to hear that we had been selected to exhibit at the show alongside nine other sensory pockets, all designed by different people and with different sensory themes.
Our first sketch of the design
Sourcing the plants
Since the brief for the pockets specified no hard landscaping, the vast majority of our 12m2 garden was planting. Much of our planning time was spent finessing our planting plan to really complement our ‘sound’ concept, and trying to source all the plants we needed. This proved to be much more difficult than sourcing plants for a normal garden design project, since we needed to ensure that all of the plants included were looking their best during the one specific week of the show. This can be a tall order – with growth and flowering times so heavily affected by the weather, and weather in the UK becoming increasingly unpredictable. We did a mixture of growing our own, buying plants from nurseries early to grow them on ourselves, and getting nursery plants delivered to the site at the beginning of the build. There was also a little bit of last minute shopping when we bought some Astrantia from one of the exhibitors in the Floral Marquee to fill a bit of a gap! The full list of the plants we used can be found on our RHS Shows page.
The build
We arrived on site the Thursday before the start of the show, dressed in our flattering hi-vis and steel toe-capped boots, giving us four days to create our pocket garden. The trick to planting a show garden is that all the plants are put into the ground in their pots, meaning that they don’t suffer from having their roots disturbed by planting out, and they are much easier to remove at the end of the week. The RHS team had already dug out our pocket to 20cm deep, so we spent most of the build arranging the plants in the right place and then filling in between the pots with the soil that had been removed. This involved a lot of wheelbarrowing! Once everything was in place we used a nice composted bark mulch to top dress everything and added the finishing touches – a bird bath with a small fountain and a basket full of dried, rattling seedheads.
Show week
About 130,000 people attend the Hampton Court Show every year over the six days it’s open to members and the public, and we were there every day to speak to people about the pocket garden. It was great to hear people’s reactions and have a chance to answer questions about the plants – our lovely Digitalis ferruginea (rusty foxgloves) were definitely our most asked about plants! In the lulls between conversations the garden itself provided plenty of entertainment in the form of the many insects that visited over the week. The foxgloves, oregano and Cirsium lived up to their reputation with the bees, and the whole show site was full of little orange butterflies called Small Skippers – they turned up the minute we unloaded the plants from the van.
Our best bit
One of the great things about the show was meeting all the people designing the other sensory pocket gardens. It was interesting to see how everyone had interpreted the sensory brief – from the more literal, like a border filled with edible plants, to the conceptual ‘sense of self’. Everyone was so lovely and happy to share anything – whether that be hoses and watering cans, tips or extra materials and tools.
Would we do it again?
Let’s just say watch this space – we’ve definitely been bitten by the RHS show bug!