Image: From left: Wayne Grills, Monty Don, Sue Biggs and RHS Young Landscape Contractor Ewan Sewell
The inaugural RHS Young Landscape Contractor competition has turned out to be an event to remember for the 2016 winner – 25 year old Yorkshire-based Ewan Sewell. The garden he constructed at the RHS Flower Show Tatton Park not only won him the RHS Young Landscape Contractor title but also an RHS Gold medal and the Best Construction award.
The three shortlisted finalists – Ewan, Matthew Beesley from Cheshire and Sam Hunt from Gloucestershire – partnered the three finalists in the RHS Young Planting Designer 2016 competition to build and plant a garden designed by the 2015 RHS Young Designer Tamara Bridge. Ewan’s garden – a Coastal Retreat – was deemed by the judges to be worthy of Gold and with the announcement that he had won the RHS Young Landscape Contractor title the Best Construction award was probably a foregone conclusion.
On announcing its support for the competition in the spring, BALI hoped it would provide a platform from which the UK’s largest trade body for the landscape industry could promote its key messages of quality, expertise and all round professionalism whilst raising the profile of professional landscaping as a career choice for young people. The success of the competition, both in terms of the achievements of the young people taking part and in the incredible interest generated at the show, has certainly secured its future as a major competition for young people aspiring to succeed in the industry.
