A collaboration between Flood Re, environmental expert Dr. Ed Barsley and garden designer Naomi Slade, the garden first seen at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 2024 served as a practical blueprint for how outdoor spaces can help reduce flood risks while enhancing property aesthetics.
Building on the RHS Chelsea garden, the newly established permanent Flood Resilient Garden at Howbery Business Park has been enhanced with additional landscaping and planting design by Belderbos Landscapes. The primary objective of this garden is to illustrate how a harmonious blend of functionality and aesthetics, reminiscent of a conventional terraced house and garden, can contribute to the urgent need for flood mitigation in the United Kingdom. One in four homes in the country faces the risk of flooding.
“With this garden, we wanted to demonstrate that flood resilient design needn’t be a compromise, you can create spaces that are both beautiful and enriching, whatever the weather. The original garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show was a magical, if fleeting, moment. In reimagining it for a permanent setting, we’ve worked hard to ensure it can endure and thrive for decades to come. I’m delighted it now has a lasting home, one that offers education, enhances biodiversity, helps manage flood risk, and offers a calm, reflective space for all who visit,” explained Barsley of the Environmental Design Studio.
Interior changes such as the use of specialist plaster, raised electric sockets and tiled floors, not only make a huge difference in reducing the impact of, and potential for flood, but are a vital first line of defence, ensuring households can recover more swiftly from flooding and stand better protected against future incidents. The garden can be adapted to face the challenges of heavy rain and surface water. A pond, for example, can double as a sump to collect water and slowly allow it to drain away, whilst a smart rainwater tank allows remote drain-down ahead of predicted rainfall. The garden also features a range of carefully curated wild flower meadow, edible and shade resilient plants alongside water lovers such as Baldellia ranunculoides, Caltha palustris, Lychnis flos-cuculi, Rodgersia and Juncus ensifolius.
“We’re thrilled that the flood resilient garden now has a permanent home, open and accessible to the wider public. Outdoor spaces like this are vital in providing a natural first line of defence against flooding. This garden demonstrates how thoughtful choices in plants and landscape design can offer both aesthetic value and tangible protection — helping to minimise physical damage and emotional strain when floods occur. If flood-resistant features and built-in water storage were adopted across communities, the collective benefit would be transformative,” Kelly Ostler-Coyle, Director of Corporate Affairs, Flood Re.
Sponsored by Flood Re, the new permanent garden supports the Build Back Better (BBB) scheme which enables qualifying policyholders to benefit from up to £10,000 towards the installation of flood resilience measures – a scheme now offered by over 70% of the UK household property insurance market.
Providing a sustainable, contemporary working environment for the diverse businesses, Howbery Business Park owned by HR Wallingford designs smart, resilient solutions across the natural and built environments to help develop resilient approaches to flooding.
