Show Stoppers (March 2010)

IT takes more than just nature alone to create a fine garden. Good design and beautiful plants are an essential part of the mix and then there are all those additional elements, such as hard landscaping, summerhouses and well-chosen furniture that are also essential.

Gardening Scotland 2010 is the place to find all of them. The national gardening and outdoor living show, which takes place from Friday, 4 June until Sunday, 6 June at The Royal Highland Centre, Edinburgh, will this year offer a one-stop shop for anyone intent on making the most out of their outdoor space.

More than 400 exhibitors will take place in this year’s Show including some of the top plant breeders in the UK and the cream of Scottish garden design talent.

Top garden designers will be on hand throughout the three days of the event giving advice on working with a professional designer.

Meanwhile, the Show Gardens are where to look for inspiration and amongst those that will flourish for the three days of the Show will be ‘Treasures in an Avant Garden’ by Lesley Watson and Dougal Philip of New Hopetoun Gardens.

Every year this exceptional garden centre based at Newton Village in Midlothian runs its own Avant Garden Festival which lasts for six months and the garden to be created at Gardening Scotland will evoke this year’s festival theme of ‘Treasure’.

Edinburgh-based landscapers Water Gems are the current holders of the British Association of Landscape Industries highest accolade and they will be at Gardening Scotland too. In collaboration with garden design company Secret Gardens, they will be creating an ambitious water feature that will make innovative use of Rebar, a material more often found in the construction industry where it is used for reinforcing concrete.

“The garden will be called ‘Reinforcing Nature’ and the Rebar will be used in a very natural way, much like woven willow but with far greater strength,” says Carolyn Grohmann of Secret Gardens.  The planting list for the garden includes wild flowers, ferns and many beautiful grasses such as Carex flagellifera, Carex muskingumensis and Stipa tenuissima.

There will be further contrasts between natural and manmade materials in the “Chaos Garden’ where landscape sculptor Nick Denney and designer Doug MacLeod of Stone, Wood, Water, Light will explore the symbiotic relationship between plants and the built environment.

Primo Landscaping, who are regular exhibitors at Gardening Scotland, will be using contemporary materials and sharp planting to create the ‘City Slicker’ garden while property management company Ross & Liddell will be creating a garden that will emphasise the positive impact on an apartment block of a well-designed outdoor space.

Other Show Gardens will celebrate the work of charity Enable Scotland that supports people with learning disabilities.  A team from Enable works at the Inch Nursery in Edinburgh, growing the plants for the city’s hanging baskets and for the famous Floral Clock in Princes Street Gardens and they will be working with Naturally Inspired garden design to create a garden based on a series of interlocking squares that will show how, given adequate support, the lives of people with learning difficulties can be changed for the better.

Last year’s winners of the Best Show Garden Award, wildflower specialists, Var Scotica, will be back to create ‘A Secret Garden’ with a Victorian theme and hidden areas while the Scottish Dry Stone Walling Association will be creating ‘The Walls of Scotland’, a garden that will evoke the five traditional recruiting areas of the Scottish regiments and which is being supported by the new garden centre at Erskine Hospital which provides care and rehabilitation for injured ex-servicemen and women.

ENDS

Gardening Scotland 2010 will take place from 4 June until 6 June at The Royal Highland Centre, Edinburgh.
Tickets cost from £11. Children under 16 go free.
Visit www.gardeningscotland.com or call the Ticket Hotline on 0131 333 0965.

Gardening Scotland Photos