Park Hill to get new permanent community garden from Chelsea Flower Show
Park Hill to become permanent home of edgelands-inspired RHS Chelsea Flower Show garden
A garden created for this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show to mark the centenary of the Campaign to Protect Rural England will be permanently relocated to Park Hill after the event.
The Campaign to Protect Rural England Garden: On the Edge has been designed by award-winning garden designer Sarah Eberle for the RHS show, which takes place from 19 to 23 May.
The garden highlights the importance of green spaces on the fringes of towns and cities and their role in connecting people with nature.
Following the show, the garden will be moved to the regenerated Park Hill development in Sheffield, where it will become a permanent community space for residents.
The relocation also continues the legacy of environmental campaigner Ethel Haythornthwaite, who played a key role in the creation of Sheffield’s Green Belt and was among CPRE’s earliest supporters.
The garden will feature a large “Mother Nature” sculpture partly carved from fallen mature trees, with woven willow hair flowing into a dry-stone wall running through the site.
A winding pathway will lead visitors beneath the sculpture into a sheltered central area designed for quiet community use.
Planting will focus on native British species, including flowering plants often regarded as weeds, but considered important for biodiversity.
Among those helping to create the garden are Lydia and Cuthbert Noble, fifth-generation stone wallers from Holmfirth in West Yorkshire.
Using stone sourced from Longcliffe Quarry in Derbyshire, the siblings will help construct the sculpture and dry-stone features.
Lydia Noble said: “We are both really looking forward to this project as RHS Chelsea is such a special event and it allows us to be far more artistic in what we create. For the garden to then live on after the show in Yorkshire makes this even more special for us.”
The project is sponsored by Project Giving Back as part of CPRE’s centenary celebrations.
CPRE chief executive Roger Mortlock said: “We want people to feel pride in their countryside, and through this garden, to love the countryside that’s right on their doorstep.
“We’re especially excited that the garden will be relocated to Sheffield.”
He added that Sheffield was significant in the organisation’s history because of early campaigns there for the creation of a Green Belt.
Park Hill has undergone major redevelopment in recent years through a joint venture between Urban Splash and Places for People, creating new homes, student accommodation and public spaces.
Work has recently begun on a fourth phase of development comprising 125 new homes.
Speaking on behalf of the joint venture, Sian Stanhope said the garden would provide residents with “a beautiful new space to enjoy” while reflecting Park Hill’s heritage and Yorkshire craftsmanship.
Eberle, the most decorated British designer in Chelsea Flower Show history, said the garden aimed to celebrate “the often-overlooked beauty and importance of everyday spaces, where people and nature coexist”.