Awards
This garden was awarded
Gold and Best Small Garden
The Widex Hearing Garden: Celebrating Sound
Widex
Designer: Selina Botham (Designs for all Seasons)
Sponsor: Widex in partnership with the Association of Independant Hearing Healthcare Professionals
Contractor: English Garden Company
The Widex Hearing garden explores the importance of sound in our gardens. It features an interactive listening wall, where sounds from the garden can be heard. Beautiful 'sound sculptures' add to the sensory experience.
This is a light, modern courtyard garden centred around a water feature that, like a heartbeat, provides a slow resonating ‘pulse’. Limestone paving gives a smooth, smart surface that contrasts with soft flowing lines of herbaceous planting.
Silver birch is used in the boundary screens - its organic shapes contrast with the straight lines of oak posts and a 'floating' oak bench.
Silvery willow provides the backdrop and looks almost fluid in the breeze. Bright juvenile leaves of eucalyptus shine and shimmer in the sun, while swords of astelia and spiky fascicularia provide another contrasting form.
This is the first garden created at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show to be designed around enjoying the sounds found in nature. It highlights how gardens can be experienced on another sensory level when people are attuned to the ‘sound-scape’ all around.