Triumph: Lulu Urquhart and Adam Hunt with their rewilding garden
(Picture: Lucy Young)The creators of a “rewilding” garden that today scooped the top prize at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show urged Londoners to put down their tools and let nature take its course.
Debut Chelsea designers Lulu Urquhart and Adam Hunt were crowned best in show for their naturalistic “A Rewilding Britain Landscape” — described as “exquisite” by judges — imagining a beavers’ dam on a brook in the west country after the reintroduction of the species.
But the pair, based in Bruton in Somerset, said the principles of rewilding were not just for the countryside but could also be applied equally to London plots — however small.
Mr Hunt said: “Gardeners have to be less tidy, mess is nature’s way of creating habitats. British gardeners give themselves too much work. They should just be sitting in it and enjoying it and listening to the birds. It should be less about a jobs list and more of an enjoyment list.
“Gardeners love nature, that’s why they do it so it should be about encouraging nature. ‘No mow May’ is a good example of that, but why mow at all up at least up until the autumn?”
Ms Urquhart said: “You need a bit of decay in a garden. Decay is a cleansing system, a health system, it creates healthy soils, you need the whole cycle in a garden.
“Nature works in proportions, a mosaic of three. There’s the lower plant level, shrubs and the tree canopy. Animals can move through that in safety and find food and shelter. Any sized garden can observe that rule, even in a smaller city garden.”
The rewilding garden — complete with sticks pre-gnawed by beavers from the Otter Valley — is planted with native tree, shrub and wild flower species including white willow, hawthorn, alder, devil’s-bit scabious, marsh valerian, dog violet and greater tussock sedge.
The show is back in its traditional May slot for the first time since 2019 after being cancelled in 2020 and moved to September last year because of Covid restrictions. James Alexander-Sinclair, the RHS chairman of judges, said: “It was a hard debate between the judging panel to decide which garden to award best in show. In the end all the judges were captivated by the skill, endeavour and charm of A Rewilding Britain Landscape — every step is exquisite.”
Tayshan Hayden-Smith, the 25-year-old guerrilla gardener from North Kensington behind the Hands Off Mangrove by Grow2Know garden inspired by the trial of the Mangrove Nine group of black activists in 1971, won the second category of award, the silver gilt.
