“Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.” – Pablo Picasso
In the wake of an extreme weather event, a fallen tree has caused significant damage to a beloved garden rockery, creating a unique opportunity for restoration and renewal paving the way for an innovative garden repurposing project that aligns closely with natural processes and ecological sustainability.
Jon Pilling, If a Tree Falls, TP124, RHS Flower Show Tatton Park 2024, #RHSTattonPark
Key Features of the Revitalized Garden:
- Natural Habitat Restoration: A specimen tree, naturally occurring along with Betula pendula (Silver Birch), will be positioned behind the fallen tree to form a light canopy, offering both habitat and food for insects and birds.
- Interactive Fallen Tree: The fallen tree itself will be transformed into a natural seat, allowing visitors to rest and reflect, integrating seamlessly with the surrounding landscape. This feature will add nutrients back into the soil and provide a habitat for fungi and small creatures.
- Water Feature: A galvanized trough pool will be introduced to supply vital water for wildlife, enhancing the garden's ecosystem and offering aesthetic benefits.
- Shelter and Accessibility: Feature rocks will provide shelter for small creatures, while gravel pathways around reclaimed paving will facilitate water recharge and easy access to planting and seating areas.
- Diverse Planting for Habitat: The garden features a range of plants across three naturalistic habitats, providing larval food for various moths, butterflies, and beetles. Additionally, diverse flower types attract and support numerous pollinating species.
The felled tree, while devastating, now serves as a central feature in the reimagined garden space, epitomizing the concept that new growth often arises from chaos.
The garden's redesigned elements focus on enhancing biodiversity and creating habitats for a variety of species, including insects, birds, and mammals.
Design Philosophy:
This philosophical question prompted a reflection on whether natural processes have meaning beyond human perception, our role in nature and our impact on the environment. In response, the garden's design looks to achieve a sustainable mutual symbiosis, emphasizing that our existence is intertwined with these processes, highlighting the need for sustainable interaction with nature.
“Life, just like the stars, the planets, and the galaxies, is just a temporary structure on the long road from order to disorder. But that doesn't make us insignificant, because we are the Cosmos made conscious. Life is the means by which the universe understands itself. And for me, our true significance lies in our ability to understand and explore this beautiful universe.” – Brian Cox
Towards Sustainable Mutualism:
As the world faces unprecedented ecological challenges, the garden’s design underscores the importance of achieving a harmonious balance with nature as we are intrinsically part of it. This project aims to demonstrate that even in the face of disaster, there are opportunities to restore and enhance our natural environment.
“If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” – George Berkeley
Plants and information:
The plants included in the garden offer a range of benefits for small creatures and are also appealing to us. The planting design draws influence from the work of the New Perennial movement, Nigel Dunnet and James Hitchmough.
The plants used have lots of different flower types providing pollen for a wide range of pollinating insects and act as a food source for the larvae of butterflies, moths and beetles.
Plant Sourcing:
We are vehemently grateful to all our plant suppliers; without them the garden wouldn’t be a garden.
All our shrubs, wildflowers and ferns were sourced from www.celticwildflowers.co.uk a nursery which specialises in native plants for building habitat. The work they do is amazing, there is a video on the website that explains more.
Our Acer campestre was sourced from www.bannisterhallnurseries.co.uk
Grasses and perennials were sourced from www.bluebellcottage.co.uk, David G Ross Ltd, www.ladybrooknursery.com and Fryers Garden Centre
Our Birch trees were sourced from www.laneslandscapes.co.uk along with some grasses.
Sponsors:
The garden will be re sited to a private client P & J Vipond who have invested in the garden allowing the build to go ahead. They have sponsored the components which will be re used in their garden to create a version of what you see at the RHS Flower Show Tatton Park 2024. We expect to have the project on this website by the end of the year so please check back to see what we achieved.
H Barnes very kindly invested in our business we are particularly grateful.
Special Thanks:
www.nwtt.co.uk Northwest Timber Treatments supply a tremendous amount of the materials we use on our build projects. They have very kindly helped us to move our log, provided a place to work on it and stored it for us since earlier in the year. Huge thanks to everyone at NWTT especially Tom, Ian and Rob.
Danny and Jack at Styal Agri-services helped us greatly with the fallen tree we used to make our bench thanks to you both.
The Intrinsic Link would like to offer very heartfelt and special thanks to Martyn and Julie Pilling, Esther Womak, Jude Mayer, Dr Michelle Hardman, John Hayhurst My Gardener, Katie Dervin and Mike Barnes.
Many thanks to the RHS for giving us this opportunity and seeing the potential in us.
For Albert and Ian