Exhibitors
Back to back gardens
Finchale Training College
Life & Soul
Designers: Gary Hillery, Ken Walton, Stephen Robson
Sponsors: Marshall’s Paving, The Gannett Foundation, City of Durham
Contractor: Finchale Training College
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The garden is to have a permanent home within the Central Durham Crematorium grounds. It is designed to give a positive benefit to the community, who have the opportunity to experience an area for peaceful contemplation. This will aid the bereavement process, promoting a feeling of comfort, security and life. It not only acts as a focus for reflection, but also as a place for happy memories and recollection.
The seating area gives comfort and shelter within the walled surroundings of the garden, offering an inviting environment of warmth and wellbeing. The terracotta walls give organic warmth, which complements the flowers and foliage growing in front of them.
The lunar pavement offers a solid foundation - functional and supportive yet attractive. The wall gives security and the water flow in the rills creates tranquillity but with natural vibrancy. The rills also collect and deliver rain water to a reservoir under the paving. The College logo, the Phoenix is created as a focal point that when viewed throughout the garden looks like five pieces of abstract art, but at one viewpoint converges to form the Phoenix. This represents how individual elements can be combined to produce a celebration of life from emotional embers.
Energy to power the irrigation pumps is provided by solar power, and the water is stored below the paved area.
The planting is designed to give colour and promote an essence of the life force generated throughout the natural life of the garden. Its colour gives a feeling of vitality and warmth. Careful consideration has been given to each plant’s sustainability, with their needs given added priority using environmental methodology. The plants are from the College's nursery showing that they can survive the local climate. The planting is totally perennial, so regardless of the season, it generates a life enhancing experience of the garden’s glory thus creating a horticultural soul, which has a past, a present and more importantly a future.