The Archers’ 75th Anniversary Garden

The garden

Imagined as a welcoming, productive and sustainable family-centred space, the setting is inspired by the rhythms of life on a small organic farm. It responds to a recent storyline in which a sewage spill flooded Bridge Farm, highlighting the environmental challenges facing modern farming communities while offering a hopeful vision of recovery and stewardship of the land.

A long-time listener, Jo Thompson celebrates traditional skills associated with farm life. Working areas for vegetable growing, cheesemaking and small-scale food production sit alongside soft ornamental planting. Key features include orchard fruit trees within a wildflower meadow, a wildlife pond and pollinator-friendly plants. Species such as Leucanthemum vulgare (ox-eye daisy), Nepeta (catmint) and Campanula (bellflower) provide both nectar and structure, reflecting the garden's emphasis on ecological health as well as visual beauty.

Above all, this naturalistic space recognises the strong sense of community at the heart of The Archers, aiming to give visitors a feeling of connection to the stories that have shaped the programme for 75 years.

The planting

The garden will include a series of heritage fruit trees, including quince. Roses will play an important role, reflecting Jo’s expertise and long-standing love of working with them in her designs. Jo has chosen The King’s Rose, a new variety from David Austin Roses, with its distinctive striped fuchsia and white petals, alongside Rosa TOTTERING-BY-GENTLY, with its simple yellow flowers and repeat flowering, and Rosa KEW GARDENS, for its light, airy growth and abundant blooms. 

Key plants:

• Monarda ‘Beauty of Cobham’

• Nepeta grandiflora ‘Dawn to Dusk’

• Filipendula rubra ‘Venusta’

• Digitalis ferruginea

• Campanula lactiflora ‘Loddon Anna’

Plants supplied by: Stonebarn Landscapes, Hardys Cottage Garden Plants, Deepdale Trees, David Austin Roses, The Big Hedge Company

The designer – Jo Thompson

Jo is one of the UK’s leading garden designers, known for creating beautifully crafted, sustainable landscapes and gardens that stand the test of time. Her work is defined by biodiversity, exquisite planting design, and a masterful understanding of space, colour and form.

Renowned for her romantic style and expertise with roses, Jo favours what she calls “a gentle intervention rather than the heavy stamp of design.” Her gardens are deeply connected to their setting and have earned her an international reputation as one of the most talented and thoughtful landscape and garden designers working today.

A multiple RHS Gold-medal winner at RHS Chelsea Flower Show, most recently for The Glasshouse Garden in 2025, Jo works across private and public projects in the UK and internationally, from English country gardens and urban rooftops to walled city gardens and sun-drenched landscapes across Europe and beyond. Consistently named among the country’s leading garden designers by House & Garden, Country Life and The Times, she serves on the RHS Show Gardens Selection Panel and the RHS Gardens Committee.

Jo is the author of The Gardener’s Palette and The New Romantic Garden, and writes The Gardening Mind, a widely read Substack on garden design, planting and the ideas behind the work.

The garden legacy

All plants and hard materials will either be reused through donation schemes or returned to the nurseries and suppliers from which they were sourced.