Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Firm to design special garden for royal jubilee
ABATH landscape and architecture company has announced it is designing a special garden to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
The Queen’s Garden will be created at the Tower of London this summer as part of Historic Royal Palaces’ Superbloom display in celebration of the Queen’s 70-year reign.
The concept for the garden is being developed by Andrew Grant and James Clarke of Grant Associates, which is based on Milk Street in the city.
According to the duo, the design will draw on the colours, shapes and motifs employed by famed British couturier Sir Norman Hartnell for the Queen’s 1953 coronation gown.
A lawned area known as the Tower’s Bowling Green will be transformed into a garden featuring meadow flowers, topiary and summer-flowering perennials, bulbs and ornamental grasses.
The layout of the space - with its concentric scalloped hedging - is intended to represent the tiers of embroidery which feature on the
gown’s silk skirt, according to Grant Associates.
Nigel Dunnett, the lead horticulturalist for Superbloom, has selected shrubs such as lavender, santolina and brachyglottis greyi to frame a mix of summer flowers, hinting at the gold bugle beads, pearls and diamante on the gown.
Andrew Grant, founder and director of Grant Associates, said: “The design of the gown suggested a geometry and basic colour scheme for the garden whilst the embroidered flowers, representing multiple nations, offered a sense of the richness and diversity of Superbloom.”
Rising from the garden will be 12 cast-glass forms representing the national emblems featured in Hartnell’s embroidered design, including the thistle of Scotland, the Australian wattle and Canadian maple leaf.
In the centre of these motifs will sit a glass crown, a reminder of the Tower of London’s ancient role as home of the Crown Jewels. The hand-crafted artworks will be specially created for the Queen’s Garden by glass artist Max Jacquard.
Mr Grant added: “By representing these flowers through glass art we wanted to express the exquisite craftsmanship of the original dress and bring some of that sparkle into the garden experience.
“This is a relatively small garden within the overwhelming scale of Superbloom but we hope it provides an intimate perspective to the event.”
The Queen’s Garden will be in bloom ready for the Jubilee bank holiday weekend – Thursday, June 2 to Sunday, June 5 – and will remain until the end of September.