BBC Gardeners’ World Live’s prestigious annual awards honoured a garden based on the history of the host city, Birmingham, with its highest accolade, a Platinum Award plus Best Show Garden.
Designed by Paul Stone, the ‘Made in Birmingham Garden’ features a fully-functional steam locomotive set along a railway embankment, featuring a prize-produce allotment, cut-flower garden and, in a nod to region’s brewery culture, a hops and barley patch.
Also in the Show Garden category, the ‘Wyevale Garden Centres’ Solution Garden’ designed by David Stevens scooped a Platinum award. The spectacular garden was built to illustrate the best practice, and stylish, solutions to common garden challenges such as planting in dry shade, acid soil or boggy areas.
The Association of Professional Landscapers (APL) returned to the show with five Show Gardens on APL Avenue, created by APL accredited landscaping companies. Two of the gardens picked up Gold Awards: Keyscape Design & Construction’s ‘Breath of Fresh Air’ garden, and Peter Cowell’s ‘Inspiration in the Raw’ garden.
Elsewhere in the show, Jacob Botting and Laurence Senior won the inaugural Young Landscapers Award for their build of a Diarmuid Gavin Show Garden design, and Nikki Hollier’s Platinum-awarded design ‘The Jar of Life’ was crowned as the Best Beautiful Border. Derby College was chosen as the space which best interpreted a theme, for its ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ Beautiful Border, with the Gold-award winning ‘Tesco Every Little Helps Garden’, by Owen Morgan, recognised for Best Construction.
Paul Stone, winner of Best Show Garden, said: “With the calibre of gardens at this year’s show, I think any number of Show Gardens could have won this award. The standard is always high, but to have two platinum awards in the same category is testament to the designers. It’s an honour to have won.”
Bob Sweet, horticulture director at BBC Gardeners’ World Live, said: “Paul’s garden displays incredible imagination and ambition. To put a working steam train in a show garden in the middle of Birmingham is quite outstanding.”