RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2008: Live coverageRHS Website

Courtyard Gardens 1

Courtyard Gardens 1 - transcript

Carol Klein: The Courtyard Gardens at Chelsea provide a myriad of creative ideas for tiny, rural spaces and it’s also a great platform for talented new designers. SPANA’s Courtyard Refuge has been inspired by a Moroccan Courtyard in Marrakesh and highlights the important relationship between man and beast in that part of the world.

Chris O’Donoghue: The idea is that we’re trying to create a Moroccan courtyard, we’re not trying to reproduce it, but do something… an Anglicised version of it so it gets the same feel as it would be as if it was in Morocco, but in England. The idea is we’re trying to promote SPANA who are a charity who looks after animals in North Africa and the Middle East. So we’ve got a donkey cart in the garden, we’re going to have a live donkey on Press Day and we’re trying to raise awareness of all the wonderful work they do looking after the animals of poor people who use their donkeys for every day transport. Well, the whole idea was SPANA wanted to make it really much more like a donkey stable with a garden round it, but I said, ‘It’s much better to make a really nice garden for Chelsea with a hint of donkey’ and I’ve seen my drawing come to life, that’s the brilliant part of it. So, my vision has become a reality.

Carol Klein: The Shetland Croft garden set in the 1940’s demonstrates just what can be achieved despite an inhospitable climate. Both the plants and the artefacts here highlight the Shetlanders’ self sufficient existence.

Sue Hayward: Well, the idea behind the garden was to have an original Shetland Croft house garden, circa 1940, when crofting was a particular way of life where the sea and fishing was very important and also self-sufficiency. A lot of crofters recycled a lot of the materials on the island itself. All the wood that’s in the fence is driftwood collected from the beaches and all the stone is indigenous to Shetland. We have a mixture of wild flowers along the flowing burn and herbaceous plants that would have been in a Shetland garden around the 1940’s.