RHS Hampton: details of new Feature Garden announced
The countdown to this year's Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival is well and truly underway, with a great lineup of gardens, including a debut from the award-winning Denmans Garden.
Denmans, an RHS Partner Garden in West Sussex, is the former home and garden of the late John Brookes MBE, one of Britain’s most influential landscape designers and garden design authors.
Even though many of us view our gardens as extensions of our homes and embrace indoor-outdoor living, back in 1962, John's revolutionary ‘Room Outside’ design at the Chelsea Flower Show was one of the first to view a garden this way, depicting a living space associated with an imaginary townhouse rather than one showcasing plants. The concept was also popularised in his book, Room Outside (1969).
This year at RHS Hampton, visitors will get to see John's own private ‘room outside’, which he created outside his studio and home at Denmans Garden, where he lived from 1980 until his death in 2018.
Featuring a gravel garden, terrace, pergola and blue chairs, the Feature Garden will showcase the combined ethos of Denmans Garden's two creators, John and gravel garden pioneer, plantswoman and horticulturist, Joyce Robinson. Both were ahead of their time when it came to advocating for a low-maintenance and sustainable approach to gardening that's in harmony with nature and sympathetic to the surrounding landscape and wildlife.
Denmans Garden was started in the 1940s by Joyce, and upon visiting in 1973, John was captivated by her widespread use of gravel and innovative naturalistic planting style. 'In the following decades, he stylised the garden with bold lines and architectural plantings, melding his cutting-edge design vision with Robinson’s innovative gravel gardens and extensive plant palette,' say the team at Denmans Garden.
With this year’s Feature Garden at RHS Hampton, the team hope to show how these kinds of principles can be applied at home – no matter how big or small your outdoor space is – with a garden that combines 'a simple yet bold design with environmentally sensitive and sustainable plantings selected for their texture, shape, colour, and form'.
Denmans Garden: Room Outside will be realised by Denmans Garden's gardening team, with support from dedicated volunteers, as well as local growers, craftspeople, and makers. Most of the materials will be repurposed from Denmans Garden and returned to the garden once RHS Hampton is finished.
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