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Mencap
The Mencap & Cater Allen Bank Garden: Seeing the Whole Picture
Designer: Ruth Marshall
Sponsor: Cater Allen Bank
Contractor: Cool Gardens Landscaping
This garden is part of Mencap’s 60th year celebrations. Ruth Marshall, the garden designer, hopes that this garden will make visitors stop for a moment and consider the nature of variety in all things. The message is that all variation has value and beauty - it is the context of the viewer that can change the picture.
This garden highlights an image of two small children, one with a learning disability. Planting in this garden is in paired blocks. The shapes in the garden are all fractured in some way, for instance a notch is pulled out of the paving to leave space for a water feature. The image of the children, and in fact the whole garden, is broken and reflected in the tall prisms to the rear. As the viewer moves across the front of the garden the images change, asking us to think about the prism of our own experience and how that can impact on the way we treat others. The diamond elements in the centre of the garden highlight Mencap’s diamond year.
In this garden there are two Betula pendula (silver birch) cultivars - Betula pendula ‘Purpurea’ with purple foliage and a green-leaved Betula utilis var. jacquemontii. The signature plant in this garden is the iris. The flowers are blue and white and the foliage is greens and purples. A mix of foliage plants, grasses and flowering plants feature in this garden, with some mid-sized scented shrubs.
Ruth Marshall believes that The Mencap & Cater Allen Bank Garden: Seeing the Whole Picture provides a great opportunity for people with learning disability to gain new skills and experience by helping to create the garden.