Where Nature Navigates

The garden

More than just a route, a canal is a corridor of connection between industrialised towns and waterside habitats. This thriving ecosystem is represented here through a towpath inspired by the Huddersfield Narrow Canal, a 20-mile waterway in northern England. Using self-seeded plants salvaged from both the designer’s and sponsor’s properties, the garden demonstrates that a landscape doesn’t need to be manicured to be magnificent. Instead, it celebrates the low-maintenance, wilder verges of Digitalis and Urtica dioica, as well as resilient trees such as Crategus monogyna.

The border pays tribute to the Canal & River Trust, the UK’s largest canal charity, whose volunteers carefully nurture and protect these environments. Visitors are invited to leave with a sense of the gentle, unforced beauty found at the water's edge and to appreciate the canal as a vital green artery where human care and wild wonder meet.

Key plants: 

• Crataegus monogyna (Hawthorn): a wild native of the UK that supports hundreds of different insect and bird species. Its beautiful blooms are highly scented, and mature into bright red haws, which are loved by birds during winter

• Digitalis: a common self-seeder around wild and marginal sites, loved by insects, especially bees  

• Urtica dioica (stinging nettle): a good coloniser of disturbed ground, so is often found in sites such as the land surrounding canal towpaths. They are great for small tortoiseshell and peacock butterflies, and ladybirds feast on the aphids that shelter there

• Mentha aquatica (watermint): acts as a natural filter by removing excess nutrients and pollutants such as heavy metals from the water. It also smells characteristically minty

• Anthriscus sylvestris (cow parsley): while the flowers will have faded and transitioned to seeds, these seed heads still look beautiful and provide a significant food source for small birds and the stems provide habitat for insects to lay larvae

The designer – Alison Johnston

Alison is the founder of Take Root Garden Design, operating from Slaithwaite in the Pennines and specialising in sustainable, low-maintenance landscapes for challenging, sloped and exposed terrain. A graduate of the Northern School of Garden Design with a previous life in data analysis, she employs 3D SketchUp visualisation to help clients visualise their new, dream gardens. Johnston, an award-winning designer, combines a “hippy at heart” philosophy with practical, rugged planting schemes that bring joy and biodiversity to West Yorkshire and Lancashire gardens.

The garden legacy

Most of the materials such as the wall and gravel path, have been borrowed from the sponsor's own site and will be rebuilt after the show.