Savills (UK) Limited - A Garden for Children

The Savills ‘plot-to-plate’ garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2023 was donated by Savills to the national charity, The Shaw Trust after the Show.

Savills approached Gillian to design and create a garden for the children’s home in Nottinghamshire repurposing some of the landscaping materials and plants from their Main Avenue garden. Gillian was honoured to ‘take the baton’ from Mark Gregory of Landform Consultants, who designed and built the garden at Chelsea.

Gillian was deeply moved by the work of the The Shaw Trust, and wanted to create a garden that was playful, educational, but also provide a calming space for the children to relax and just be themselves, reusing whatever materials and plants that might be available from Chelsea. This required a fluid concept design that Gillian could adapt on the ground at the time of the build. The area set aside for the garden relocation was dark, uninviting and unused.

She found inspiration from her own childhood, playing hopscotch with her siblings, and as such the York Stone paving was laid in a fun pattern to invite and encourage those walking along the path, whether adult or child to skip or hop along. The garden also includes a bespoke Teepee-shaped den, a mud kitchen in the form of a potting shed, a sunken trampoline, swing and monkey bar. There is a picnic table, log seat using wood from the site (from trimming trees to allow more light into the garden and reclaimed pantiles from Chelsea), and boulders for seating, and a large water bowl. She also added fruit trees, a silver birch and shrubs for structure and all year round interest.

It is a garden that will grow and evolve with the children.

We would also like to thank Creepers Nursery and CED Stone for their contribution to the project.