BUILDING A CHELSEA GARDEN
Getting these right is ultimately As many as 45 people might be
what brings the designer’s vision to involved in creating a show garden
life, so as well as carrying with it an behind the scenes in the months
enormous amount of responsibility, it leading up to the show but you will
can take ridiculous amounts of time only see about 12 people on site for the
working out the best ways to construct 20-day build.
them.
By Dan Riddleston,
Managing Director, Bowles & Wyer
It’s over 25 years since I built my
first RHS Chelsea garden and in that
time I’ve been involved with about
15 gardens from large Main Avenue
Show Gardens to the smaller artisan
plots. It doesn’t matter how big or
small they are, building an RHS
Chelsea garden is a unique experience
and completely different to building a
domestic garden. Show gardens have
to embody a sense of theatre and often
involve incredibly complex structures
and techniques that no-one ever sees
and that would never be built in a
domestic setting.
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Landscape & Urban Design Issue 37 2019
This year I’m working with designer
Building an RHS Chelsea Garden Helen Elks-Smith on the Warner’s
begins months before we arrive on Distillery Garden. It features a
site. The task of building a garden central pavilion created out of
from scratch, on site, in just 20 days is drystone walling but, with two large
very challenging so like most Chelsea cantilevered roofs and a series
contractors, we build a lot of the more of complex water features, one
complicated elements off-site where that brings with it its fair share
we can trial them with specialists of challenges when it comes to
to ensure quality and accuracy. Our construction.
aim is always to shorten the time we
spend on the hard landscape elements
on site, so that the planting can be
completed ahead of time and can
have a chance to settle and establish
before the garden is judged. Building
in advance not only ensures the best
quality of build, but it saves valuable
time later.
As the contractor responsible for
making sure the garden is ready on
time, we treat it as a military exercise.
We have a strict programme of works
that sets out the sequence and timing
of all operations, from those that take
several days to those that can be done
in a couple of hours.