Because we clearly don’t already have enough on our plates with final year projects, fellow student Stuart Towner and I decided to accept a commission to design a show garden for this year’s RHS Hampton Court Flower Show.
We were commissioned by Hadlow College and the garden highlights their Betteshanger Sustainable Parks project at the former Betteshanger Colliery site in East Kent. The mine was closed, like many others, in the late 1980s. I remember covering the impact of the closures of the east Kent pits as a young newspaper reporter in the early 1990s. Close-knit communities already torn apart by bitter years of strikes, were left reeling and with few alternative job opportunities in what is a fairly isolated part of my home county. For a long time the colliery site lay derelict. In recent years part of it has been transformed into Fowlmead Country Park , with walking trails and a two-mile tarmac cycle track on and through the former colliery slag heap area. The Hadlow Group is now redeveloping the rest of the site as Betteshanger Sustainable Parks, combining sustainable business, commerce, education and tourism.
Our garden, which is called Facing Change, aims to celebrate the site’s history and look to its future. It will, hopefully, tell the story of the people who worked there, how the former industrial site has been naturally re-colonised by an incredible array of pioneer plant species and the bright future now hoped for for Betteshanger and its community.
Hampton Court Flower Show is from 29 June to 5 July. More information about our garden and others at this year’s show here. It’s going to be one of the main show gardens. Eeek!