Designed by Ann-Marie Powell for the 2024 RHS Chelsea Flower Show, the Octavia Hill Garden, sponsored by Blue Diamond and the National Trust, won Silver-Gilt and the RHS/BBC People’s Choice Award and the inaugural Children’s Choice Award. A celebration of her vital works, the garden honoured Octavia Hill, the pioneering co-founder of the National Trust, who believed green spaces and gardens were vital in everyone’ life.
Now at its permanent home, the garden is the 16th garden to join the show gardens at Bridgemere Show Gardens, in Nantwich, Cheshire. The Bridgemere Show Gardens include recreations of Gold and Silver Medal award-winning gardens from RHS Chelsea Flower Show, RHS Tatton Flower Show.
Painstakingly rebuilt after the RHS Chelsea Show Garden, the planting scheme of the original show gardens has been replicated, with only a handful of plants having to be replaced where they had not survived the move. All the key features are those as seen at RHS Chelsea, apart from the metal work birdbath, which was reportedly stolen.
Visitors attended the opening, including special guests: John Ravenscroft, the original owner and founder of Bridgemere Show Gardens; BBC Gardeners’ World presenter, Adam Frost; Clare Armstrong, a cousin of Octavia Hill, and children from the local Bridgemere Church of England Primary School.
“Having visited Bridgemere Show Gardens over the years, both during John Ravenscroft’s time and thereafter when the Gardens went into decline during their ownership under Wyevale Garden Centres, when the opportunity to buy Bridgemere Garden Centre and the Show Gardens came about, I jumped at the chance! Although the Show Gardens make no commercial sense, as they cost much more to maintain than the income they generate, these gardens are a piece of history, and I wanted to not only honour that, but also to add to that history with the addition of new show gardens,” said Alan Roper, Managing Director of Blue Diamond Garden Centres.
Jill Kerr, Group Relationship Manager for Blue Diamond Garden Centres added: “I have been incredibly lucky to have been involved in this Garden from its conception. The idea to build a show garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show, based upon the life and ethos of Octavia Hill was first voiced by our Managing Director, Alan Roper, at the very first meeting I attended and I was then involved in managing the project on behalf of Blue Diamond, both through to it being showcased at Chelsea and thereafter being rebuilt at its permanent home at Bridgemere Show Gardens. Standing in the Garden at Bridgemere on Friday, I felt quite emotional. The Garden feels to me, like it did at Chelsea; its heart and soul having followed it to its now permanent home.”
Blue Diamond Garden Centres, owned and managed in Guernsey, was founded in 1904 as a grower and exporter of locally-grown produce. Blue Diamond now employs approximately 4,500 people and manage 45 garden centres across the UK & Channel Islands.
