Chelsea highlights Gardens that reflect a strong social conscience

Brewin Dolphin’s show garden focuses on how to create a new environmentally sustainable landscape on a former 1900s industrial brownfield site – in a nod to how those living in new homes built on brownfield land can create gardens that thrive.

It will showcase a range of plants that actively restore polluted soil and absorb carbon dioxide at higher rates to clean the air, as well as shrubs and perennials that do not need much maintenance or flower for a long time to provide food for bees and other pollinators.

Another focus of the show will be mental health and well-being after two years of lockdowns, in which many people found solace in gardens and green spaces.

The Mind Garden, designed by Andy Sturgeon and sponsored by the mental health charity Mind, includes sculptural, tactile walls throughout a sloping garden. The space is designed to be a place for people to connect and includes a series of calm seating areas.

Tayshan Hayden-smith, who began gardening in a plot below London’s Westway, near the Grenfell Tower, will showcase his first garden at Chelsea this year.

The Hands off Mangrove by Grow2know garden focuses on global deforestation and social injustice. It is pollinatorfriendly and will be relocated into the community after the event.

The Rewilding Britain Landscape show garden, designed by Lulu Urquhart and Adam Hunt, replicates a rewilded area in south-west England after the reintroduction of the beaver. It features native plants, a bubbling brook and beaver’s lodge built around a willow tree.