A garden at this year's RHS Chelsea Flower Show is celebrating the overlooked 'edgelands' where town and countryside meet. Designed by Sarah Eberle, the most decorated designer at Chelsea, the On the Edge garden features stinging nettles, buttercups, and even a discarded gnome to evoke the liminal spaces on the outskirts of towns.
The garden, created for the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) to mark its centenary, aims to highlight the vulnerability of these fringe lands to development. Its centrepiece is a fallen sequoia tree sculpted into a reclining female figure by chainsaw carver Chris Wood, representing Mother Nature or Gaia. The sculpture's arm touches rainwater in a gravel pool, and its willow hair flows into a dry stone wall.
Eberle said: 'The garden is about the fringe lands of towns and cities – and how vulnerable they are to development. There is very much a feel of the countryside to it, but with a town edge coming in, in its plant material.' She hopes to inspire people to nurture these spaces, which serve as sanctuaries for wildlife and urban communities.
The planting scheme includes native plants often viewed as weeds, such as cow parsley and foxgloves, alongside ornamental plants that have been 'fly-tipped' – dumped on the site to reflect real human activity. 'A weed is only a plant in the wrong place,' Eberle said, noting that many native plants support pollinators and wildlife.
The garden also features a leaky concrete trough for damp planting and a boundary of old corrugated tin. After the show, it will be relocated to a housing development in Sheffield. CPRE is calling on the public to contribute to an interactive map of English edgelands, submitting observations about overlooked patches they use and care about.
