Members of the Association of Professional Landscapers (APL) are celebrating success at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show. In this year’s show, which has been described as the ‘best show ever’, a record number of medals have been awarded illustrating the incredibly high standard of the gardens.
APL member Adam Frost from New Ground Landscapes (Lincolnshire) won the Best Urban Garden category with his gold medal winning front garden ‘A Welcome Sight’. Designed to illustrate how front gardens can be usable and welcoming environments the judges were particularly impressed with the special care he had taken to choose appropriate, all year round planting and an achievable structure. 
Frost’s inspiration for this garden was borne out of frustration of the fact that front gardens are often used as a domestic car park rather than as a meeting place for neighbours to chat and discuss local issues. Adam explains, “I wanted to design a garden that would not only welcome you home and make you smile but also make you want to sit down and socialise with your neighbours, and hopefully by doing this, add something to our ever-declining sense of community.”
Adam and his team also won a silver gilt flora medal for ‘The Reflective Garden’, designed by Clare Agnew.
Mark Gregory, an APL member from Landform Consultants (Surrey), was a double gold medal winner this year bringing his number of Chelsea gold medals to an impressive total of 15. He was awarded a gold medal for the urban garden which he designed and built for The Children’s Society. This front garden makes clever use of a small space to make a child and environmentally friendly area which includes a soothing water feature flanked by vertical planting. Gregory and team also won a gold medal for building ‘The Savills Garden’, designed by Phillip Nixon and he consulted on the Marshalls plc garen which was awarded a silver flora medal.
Commenting on his success Gregory said, ‘To win a gold medal at Chelsea, the Grand Prix of horticulture, is fantastic – and to win two is unbelievable. Having built gardens for clients at Chelsea over the last 20 years it really is something else to win a gold medal for one that I have designed myself. This year the overall standard of gardens has been exceptionally high which makes the award even more satisfying – I am chuffed.’
Further APL winners include John Kersley from Nascentia Landscapes Ltd who built the gold winning Notcutts stand in the Grand Pavilion and Nigel Webb from Generating Gardens who was awarded a Silver Flora Medal for ‘Garden in the Silver Moonlight’, designed by Studio Lasso Ltd.
Commenting on these successes James Steele-Sargent, Chairman of the APL said, “It is great to see APL members gaining recognition for their work at Chelsea – the ultimate showcases for the garden industry. The successes in the urban garden category, including best in show, are particularly significant. The viewing public can really identify with these gardens and hopefully will be encouraged to employ the services of APL members to achieve similar results in their own front gardThe
Association of Professional Landscapers represents landscapers who meet a required standard of professionalism. Members of the Association are registered with the government endorsed TrustMark Scheme. They are regularly inspected and agree to follow a customer charter with clients. The APL is part of the Horticultural Trades Association which is the trade Association for the UK gardening industry. It is dedicated to helping develop the industry and its member businesses, including most garden centres and other garden retailers, growers, landscapers, manufacturers and service providers. For further information see www.landscaper.org.uk