Garden built by inmates vies for Chelsea honours

A GARDEN involving prison inmates and the homeless is competing for top honours against a luxury design featuring a swimming pool and spa at the world’s most famous flower show.

Around 600 exhibitors unveil their creations at the Chelsea Flower Show today, with more than 150,000 garden-lovers expected at the sold-out event over the next five days.

Designers had to contend with unseasonal frosts up to a week before the show opened, leading to concerns that this year’s event would be less colourful than years past. But organisers at the Royal Horticultural Society have promised a spectacular display, with a pair of giant seeping lock gates, a section of wrought-iron bridge and the swimming pool with submerged bar seats all vying for judges’ attention.

Exhibitors spent the weekend putting the finishing touches to the 15 show gardens, 21 small gardens and hundreds of exhibits.

Some of the gardening world’s best-known designers have created gardens for the show, including Tom Stuart-Smith for Laurent Perrier and Robert Myers for Cancer Research UK. A community theme replaced last year’s recession-busting measures for the garden.

Chelsea’s largest ever show garden, the Eden Project’s Places of Change, was created with homelessness projects and prisons, and the Hesco Leeds City Council garden, based on a section of the Leeds-Liverpool canal, complete with lock, is intended to encourage an appreciation of public green space.

Paul Stone, who designed and co-ordinated Places of Change, said: “This feels like a step into the unknown. Of the 10,000 plants, one-third have been grown by amateur individuals who have been excluded from society. At its heart is that horticulture is central to our lives and represents an opportunity for excluded people to gain life skills and contribute; that investment in people must be seen as a solution and not a cost.”

Designer Mark Gregory said he was inspired by The Children’s Society wellbeing report to create a garden for the organisation where “teenagers can spend time with their family and friends and relax in safe and stylish environment”.

Australian exhibitor Fleming’s returns to the show after being forced to pull out last year, because its Melbourne nurseries were hit by bushfires. Its Trailfinders garden features a barbecue, pool, spa, sunken lounge, wet bar and decking surrounded by jungle plants. Visitors will also see a section of wrought iron bridge in the Great Pavilion with a walkway covered in flowers.