Exhibitors
Back-to-back Gardens
Andrew Parsons
The Rainy City Garden
Designer: Andrew Parsons (Parsnip Design)
Contractor: Blockhead
Click on the image to view a hi-res version
The Rainy City Garden celebrates Manchester’s cloudy skies and wet weather. It is a contemporary, ground level, ‘sunken’ garden, designed with a wheelchair user in mind.
The sunken feel is achieved by placing all the planting in raised beds. Tall feature plants are fronted by much shorter, lush green foliage, with blue, purple, mauve and lilac flowers. This ensures that the planting is at eye level for a wheelchair user, and also creates an open aspect.
The hard landscape colouring of purple shades and grey stonework brings the planting to the fore, creates an intimate space and calming mood, and complements the wet weather. The curving lines of the raised beds aid access for maintenance.
The metalwork comprises three metal arches, placed on the open sides of the space to frame the garden and accentuate the intimate feel. It also includes two canopies, the rain canopy topped with Perspex and the sun canopy with a sail; a water feature, with its gentle, calming water flow; and a rain chime sculpture, which emerges from the centre of the water feature and ‘pings’ when raindrops hit it.
Planting includes Agapanthus ‘Blue Boy’, Clematis ‘Perle d’Azur’ and Helianthemum ‘Annabel'.