The Campaign to Protect Rural England Garden: ‘On the Edge’

The garden

The ‘On the Edge’ garden highlights the often-overlooked edgelands – countryside areas on the fringes of towns and cities. These spaces, though undervalued and threatened, are vital for connecting people with nature in daily life. Created in CPRE’s centenary year, the garden symbolises hope and resilience on our doorstep, and that with with the right care, these fragile places can recover and thrive for future generations.

Set on an imagined piece of undeveloped land on the urban fringe, key features include a fallen tree sculpted into a guardian figure (Gaia or Mother Nature), whose hand touches water from a shallow pool while her willow hair flows to form the top of a dry-stone wall snaking through the naturalistic landscape.

Naturalised garden plants from previous fly-tipping of garden waste, transform neglect into abundance. Planting is rich, diverse and textural, celebrating UK native flowering plants often dismissed as weeds but vital to our ecosystems. The design blends soft and hard boundaries and captures the essence of the rural-urban fringe, where countryside matters are a key part of daily life.

Key plants

Planting is essentially textural with incidental colour in places. These plants have been chosen as UK and Ireland natives, representing the rural landscape. 

• Carpinus betulus (hornbeam) - native multi-stem tree
• Acer monspessulanum - climate-resilient alternative to Acer campestre
• Prunus spinosa - native shrub
• Cornus sanguinea - native shrub
• Ilex aquifolium - native shrub

Plants suppliers: Kelways Plants, Crocus and Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants.

Sustainability notes

The garden will feature drystone walling and have no rigid, impermeable paving.

The designer – Sarah Eberle

“Having thought I had retired from creating gardens at Chelsea, the Campaign to Protect Rural England changed my mind – I am a country girl at heart,” Sarah Eberle.

Sarah is an internationally acclaimed landscape designer known for her naturalistic and innovative ‘fusion style’ gardens. She has created award-winning exhibition gardens across the globe, including the UK, Asia, and Europe, earning up to 20 RHS Gold Medals and multiple Best in Show accolades. Her private client work has also received top industry honours, such as the BALI Grand Award and the SGD Community Space Award. Named one of the three most influential figures in the landscape industry in 2022, Sarah won the prestigious SGLD Grand Award in 2025. With a deep-rooted passion for nature shaped by her upbringing on a Devon smallholding, her designs are both distinctive and responsive to each client’s vision.

Hear from the charity – The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE)

By celebrating overlooked spaces on the edge of our towns and cities, we want our garden to be an injection of hope that helps people reimagine the countryside on their doorstep. Our countryside is under constant threat, with more green, wild and productive land lost to development every year. The countryside on the edge of our towns and cities is some of the most contested land in the country but also the most meaningful for many people. Protecting these special, tranquil spaces means acting together, not alone.

Garden legacy

The garden will be relocated to a regenerated housing development in urban Sheffield, where the legacy of early campaigners will live on as a dynamic and thriving place with nature at its heart.