Wealth management company Brewin Dolphin has won a Silver medal at the Chelsea Flower Show with its garden Forever Freefolk, the Show debut from designer Rosy Hardy.
Her garden design was based on the chalk streams that dominate the landscape around Marlborough, where Brewin Dolphin is based, and the River Test, home to her Hampshire nursery.
The garden takes the visitor up a dried-up riverbed and through a metal ‘ocolith’ sculpture, based on the structure of Jurassic sea fossils, which was made in Trowbridge.
“The Brewin Dolphin garden allows everyone to explore and experience the fragility and unique nature of these streams by walking through a dried up chalk stream bed, past lush planting onwards towards the source,” explained Rosy.
“The garden references the changing context and form of the landscape, the sense of loss for the stream is balanced in part by the potential for renewal and the chance to turn back and contemplate the garden.
“It is also an opportunity to remind us of what water offers given that chalk aquifers supply 70 percent of Southern England’s water.”
Stephen Ford, head of Brewin Dolphin’s wealth management, said, “In keeping with our years at Chelsea RHS we are proud to be associated with Rosy, another inspiring and challenging designer.
“That Rosy Hardy is, for the first time, designing a Show garden, is testament to our mutual commitment to welcome, inspire and engage all our visitors.”
Although it was the first time Rosy had designed a garden for Chelsea, she was already the recipient of 20 gold medals for her pavilion displays. This is the fifth consecutive year that Brewin Dolphin has sponsored a garden at Chelsea.