Show Garden

A show garden in the long border category, was designed for the RHS Wentworth Woodhouse Show in 2025.

The garden was designed around the botanicals found in York Gin, many of which are grown in the gardens around York Minster. Along with the botanicals including rosemary, lavender, achillea, angelica, alpine strawberries and fennel, the colour palette gave a nod to York and Yorkshire’s heritage.

Chocolate and orange: The bronze coloured foliage of Ageratina altissima ‘Chocolate’ and bronze fennel along with the orange flowers of Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’ represented York’s chocolate heritage and the chocolate and orange gin.

Rhubarb: The pink planting palette of Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna Pink’, deep magenta of Cirsium rivulare ‘Atropurpureum’ and Echinacea purpurea along with rhubarb plants highlighted both the rhubarb gin and Yorkshire’s rhubarb heritage. The rhubarb pots were hand made by Littlethorpe Potteries, near Ripon. The clay is dug half a mile from the studio and the pottery have been in the family since 1912.

Roses were part of the planting design, both for their botanical use in gin and also their Yorkshire connections. The peach colour of Dame Judi Dench offset the copper of the gin still and blended the bronze foliage with the orange geums. Harlow Carr sat amongst the pink planting palette.

The whole scheme was linked by the CorTen steel sculpture weaving through the planting from the junipers to the copper still.

The garden was awarded a silver gilt medal by the RHS (Royal Horticultural Society).