Courtyard Gardens
Motor Neurone Disease – Shetland Croft House Garden
The Dorset Cereals Edible Playground
Awards
This garden was awarded
Bronze
St Joseph’s Hospice
The Way Forward
Designers: Zoe Cain, with Jim Buttress VMH and Jocelyn Armitage
Sponsor: St Joseph’s Hospice and Perennial
The Way Forward is a garden of life and colour, which will inspire the visitor to face the future with confidence while honouring the past.
This easily maintained and drought-tolerant garden will be a place for reflection when it returns to St Joseph’s Hospice. Sandstone monoliths present moisture-loving plants as fossils - looking back to the past as plants such as willow, flag, gunnera and hosta will be increasingly unviable in drier times.
The garden also includes a water feature to represent a life force. No water is wasted through evaporation or splashing in this water-wise garden, as every drop is protected and conserved in a polished, transparent sphere. Heliotrope, Cordyline and Helichrysum petiolare ‘Limelight’ provide vivacious colour, while melianthus and eucalyptus provide drama in form, rather than colour.
Trachycarpus fortunei hints at more exotic planting to come, and lavender and aubretia remind the visitor of old traditions in English gardening.
