INTERNATIONAL GARDEN FESTIVAL

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The theme of the 29th International Garden Festival at Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, France, is Gardens of the Earth. Twenty-four teams from around the world have created their varied responses, which include an avenue of clematis and a garden that bursts out of the cracks in a tarmac surface. Five designers present their Carte Verte installations, including Leon Kluge’s garden Under the African Sun (shown), which will become a permanent addition to Chaumont, and Patrick Nadeau’s greenhouse display of Tillandsia usneoides. Until 1 November. domaine-chaumont.fr 1 3 2

British artist Bruce Munro, known for his large-scale light installations, has embarked on a new work that traces the ridge of Knoll Hill, near his studio in Wiltshire, creating a ribbon of light that can be seen and visited from a public footpath alongside the work. The artist was inspired to create the 1,650m Ribbon of Light to help raise funds for NHS workers and volunteers as he took his daily walks on the hill. He and his family have attached lines of used CDs to the existing mesh fence, which glint in the sun. To donate to Bruce’s Just Giving page visit justgiving.com/ fundraising/ribbonoflight 2 4 3

Adam Richards Architects has designed the new brick and black zinc learning centre for Walmer Castle Gardens in Kent, with an arched picture window that frames a view of the cloud-shaped hedges bordering the kitchen garden. The same materials have been used for the adjacent café, which opens on to a Yorkstone terrace. The architects have also devised a zigzagging flight of stairs in galvanised steel and oak for the English Heritage property, which provides a link between the main grounds and The Glen, a previously inaccessible planted chalk quarry. adamrichards.co.uk 4

Czech architecture practice RicharDavidArchitekti has solved the problem of siting a greenhouse so it didn’t block the 360-degree view of a surrounding orchard by placing it on the top of the single-storey house. The steel-framed greenhouse sits on top of a new-build family home in the Czech town of Chlumec. Its roof is made from translucent polycarbonate that overhangs the house, creating an awning for a timber terrace that wraps round the house providing access to all the rooms. The greenhouse is warmed by the excess heat rising from the house. richardavid.cz

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James and Helen Basson of Scape Design have won a gold medal for their show garden inspired by the Greek legend of the Odyssey at the 2020 Philadelphia Flower Show.

The garden, which also won the Governor’s Trophy for the Most Innovative or Unique Design, featured a progression of white forms to suggest Greek island villages, and the journey through the garden mirrored Odysseus’s voyage home. Planting included evergreen shrubs, such as Chamaecyparis obtusa, and was designed to reflect that moment in spring when colourful annuals such as mustard Sinapis alba burst into life. theflowershow.com

Horticulturists from China have collaborated with the design team at RHS Garden Bridgewater and Greater Manchester’s Chinese community to create a new Chinese-inspired garden for the RHS’s newest garden. Located in the garden’s original woodland, it will stretch on either side of a new stream that links the lake below Worsley New Hall with a new lake close to the entrance building. Distinct zones include a Chineseinspired meadow and a grove of Davidia involucrata. RHS Garden Bridgewater is due to open in 2021. rhs.org.uk/gardens/bridgewater

London’s oldest public park, Finsbury Circus Gardens, which was first laid out in 1606, is to become a green sanctuary in the City of London once more. A substantial area of the park had been cordoned off as a work site for the rail link Crossrail in 2010. Now a two-stage competition is under way to find the most creative and sustainable design by an architect and landscape architect team that will provide a new pavilion and hard and soft landscaping. Historic features, such as the drinking fountain, will be reinstated. The shortlisted designs will be announced later in the year. cityoflondon.gov.uk 8

LDA Design’s Bristol studio has revealed a new vision for Bristol’s Redcliffe Way, which would transform the dual carriageway into a green gateway from Temple Meads railway station into the city. The designs use a Healthy Street toolkit to make a people-friendly, green and shared space. Affordable homes, which will be no higher than six storeys with roof-top gardens and ground floors that provide local shops and community services, would replace tarmac and traffic. The scheme also puts the currently neglected Grade I-listed St Mary Redcliffe church centre stage. lda-design.co.uk