The Landscape Service wins big at BBC Gardeners’ World Spring Fair
A Southampton-based company has been awarded Best Showcase Garden at BBC Gardeners’ World Spring Fair at Beaulieu last week.
The Landscape Service received the top award for its Nordic Retreat garden, which also scooped a Platinum Award. Managing director Luke Mills designed the minimalist garden as a temporary respite from the urban environment, with neutral colours, plants to create shade and natural hard landscaping materials.
Mills says: “The Nordic Retreat is our first show garden so I couldn’t be happier to have won this award. Inspired by my Nordic heritage, I wanted the garden to have a therapeutic effect, providing calm and respite from busy life. It’s been a real team effort by gardeners, landscapers, suppliers and sponsors, and I’m over the moon.”
BBC TV gardening presenter Frances Tophill presented the award to The Landscape Service, as well as the Best Beautiful Border and Platinum Award to ‘Not all those who wander are lost’ by Furzey Gardens and Minstead Trust, which provides training and work experience for people with learning disabilities.
The Beautiful Borders competition asks entrants to plant and create design features for 9m2 plots. This year’s theme was ‘My garden Escape’. Furzey Gardens and Minstead Trust were inspired by a poem from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. The border features plants grown at Furzey Gardens, a stepping stone path, and a grand chair carved from the trunk of an old Elm tree.
Students from Kingston Maurward College in Dorset won the Spring Fair’s first inter-horticultural college competition. Inspired by the college’s Victorian heritage, A Wardian Garden won Best College Garden and a Platinum Award. All college teams were mentored by award-winning garden designer, Cherry Carmen.
Show assessor Richard Barnard says: “It’s great to have the colleges here at the Spring Fair. The quality of work is excellent and these brilliant students are the future of horticulture.”
