Visit the RHS Cut Flower Garden
Be inspired by the beautiful garden that would have been at Hampton Court in 2020
Garden designer and author Arthur Parkinson makes his festival debut with the RHS Cut Flower Garden. Designed together with Sarah Raven, this colourful garden will celebrate exquisite British-grown flowers and choice flower combinations for plots of every size.
There's a Cutting Garden Demonstration and Workshop Tent next door for you to learn floristry and dyeing, as well as cut-flower tips and tricks from our line-up of expert guests.
Putting pollinators first
Sarah Raven provides a beautiful range of
pollinator-friendly plants and seeds to grow for cutting, and this garden is a reflection of her personal gardening style and love of bold, lavish colour, wildlife-friendly borders and lots of flowers for cutting, using
dahlias and
annuals.
The walk-through garden provides a visual feast for people and pollinating insects. Large flower beds are surrounded by brick and sand paths, and are full of bright dahlias and sunflowers. These charming flowers peep through a jungle of millet (
Panicum sp
.) foliage.
A scene of sweet peas
The grasses are complimented by avenues of sweet peas; a mix of both old and recently-bred varieties that have good stem length and impressive fragrance. Growing mostly in old galvanized bins and dolly tubs, they will fill the air with scent as people walk up and down the garden.
Sweet pea wigwams and flower bed staking uses foraged silver birch that has been hand-coppiced in Nottinghamshire. These sapling branches are easily woven to create plant supports that blend into the planting harmoniously.
Creatures great and small
Along the back of the garden will be a hen house and hen run planted with lavender and herbs. These are home to bantam hens which have the aptly-titled feather colouring of millefleur, which means a thousand flowers.
The garden will be alive with bees and other pollinators with a focus on single and anemone-type dahlias and nectar-rich cutting annuals at large. These will deliberately outnumber the sterile decorative dahlias with which people have come to associate dahlias.
Five key plants for pollinators in the garden
Keep your eyes open for these cut-flower favourites, bold, elegant and a treat for the senses.
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