A Sheffield inspired show garden won best in show for 2023, while Yorkshire designer Mark Gregory marked his 34th consecutive year at the flower show.
Sheffield inspired Horatio’s Garden wins Gold Medal at RHS Chelsea 2023
Charlotte Harris and Hugo Bugg of Harris Bugg Studio have won the 'Best Show Garden' award for their an immersive, restorative show garden for spinal injuries charity Horatio’s Garden.
Horatio’s Garden will have a second, permanent home at the Princess Royal Spinal Injuries Centre in Sheffield, where it will benefit 360 in-patients and their families every year, along with thousands of outpatients, and the 250 NHS staff who care for them.
The garden has landed the Harris Bugg duo their sixth gold medal showing at the Chelsea Flower and they found inspiration in the Steel City and the nearby Peak District.
The water feature celebrates industrial metals including steel and bronze and historic cutlery moulds that made Sheffield so famous. Their design references the network of craftspeople working out of small workshops or their homes for the larger companies in Sheffield called the ‘Little Mesters’
Stone cairns, made from Derbyshire grit stone, being created in collaboration with Noble Stonework - a sibling team with a 200 year family history of working in stone, including links back to providing the grinding stones needed for cutlery making in Sheffield
The garden building's use of timber connects to the wooded valleys of Sheffield and the use of birch branches in the removal of impurities in the rolling of steel.
READ MORE: The making of Horatio’s Garden at 2023 RHS Chelsea
Mark Gregory wins silver gilt award with Savills garden at RHS Chelsea
Yorkshire designer Mark Gregory, dubbed the 'King of Chelsea' returned to the Flower Show's main avenue with a plot to plate garden for Savills.
The Savills Garden was designed by the ‘King of Chelsea’ award-winning garden designer and landscaper, Mark Gregory and was awarded the silver-gilt standard
The garden marked the designer's 34th consecutive year at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show and is his 107th Chelsea garden overall.
Savills aimed to showcase a ‘plot to plate’ alfresco experience that would underline their commitment to promoting sustainable development.
Three years in the making, the garden evokes the experience of an intimate walled garden of an imagined country hotel, featuring a contemporary seasonal potager that offers both a sanctuary and a source of the very best in flavours.
Demonstrating an edimental planting scheme - a trend that combines ornamental and edible plants – the garden provides inspiration for a ‘plot-to-plate’ alfresco dining experience to be showcased in the show’s first ever working outdoor kitchen with the first show garden Chef in Residence, green Michelin starrred Sam Buckley.
The edimental style of planting that was chosen, has nostalgic echoes of seasonal potagers but has been updated with learnings from the pandemic; an updated version of a productive garden that requires less maintenance, less space and a lower budget.
Mark said: “I think this garden will speak to a lot of people and has, at its core, elements that are very close to my heart; a beautiful space, created considerately, that brings people together to enjoy fantastic food and great times. It will be a vision to the eye as well as being a feast for the palette, an elegant, intimate, romantic garden, an escape that has an essence of nostalgia with a contemporary ease.
