Lindsay Warwick, an up and coming garden designer is competing to win the Chris Beardshaw Mentoring Scholarship. As part of the scholarship process, candidates who got through the first round have the opportunity to design and build a show garden at the Malvern Spring Show 2011. Over the next few days Lindsay is exhibiting her show garden which is based on the theme of ‘Atom’ to celebrate UNESCO’s International Year of Chemistry which runs throughout the course of 2011.
Lucy, one of our landscape architects has been assisting with the planting of the garden and providing moral support through the daunting RHS judging process and press day… good luck Lindsay!
Garden Concept
'The garden has been inspired by the ‘magnetic moment’ of an atom. Drawing people to the space like electrons looping a nucleus. ‘Chemistry...all that matters’ has taken the typical associations of science and placed them in a showcase.
A blend of art and education, tribute is paid to the test tube rack and dusty chalkboards that have been an ever fixed mark in Chemistry lessons for so many of us.
A minimalist planting palette serves to reflect the key components of compounds, with dense central ‘nuclei’ topiary balls surrounded by clouds of ‘electron’ planting.
The iconic ‘atom’ sculpture piece stands adjacent to the central pond, rivers of meandering electrons flow from this source winding their way through the space, weaving around the base of the test tube feature that proudly bubbles away at the back of the class.
Here you will find rambling plants, the ‘billowing of scientific experiments’ encased by the frantic scribbles on the blackboard, or in the words of Dalton
“atoms of matter bound together by a force of attraction”.'
