nurturing nature in the city


RHS Hampton Court 2023

The Place:
RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival showcases glorious gardens, fabulous floral displays and in 2023 Viriditas Studio created an award-winning show garden at the festival.

The Brief:
The brief is to inspire a love of nature in the students. Many inner city students do not have their own gardens and multiple studies show that young people are more disconnected from nature than ever. We used affordable, and where possible, reclaimed materials to create a space that is appealing to wildlife and also a haven for the students. The pollinator-friendly planting palette is easy to maintain so that the children can manage it themselves, igniting their passion for gardening!

The Design: 
Nurturing Nature in the City is a haven for wildlife at its final destination, Acland Burghley school in Camden.

Taking inspiration from inner city green developments along disused urban railways such as the High Line in NYC and Parkland Walk in Highgate the garden distils the ideas from these enormous projects into a space where schools or even home gardeners could replicate something similar using waste and reclaimed materials on a budget.

The feeling of being in a wild space is evoked using stone, water and earth within an urban inner-city environment.

The 25 Square meters of garden is brimming with opportunities for wildlife including multiple habitats: gabion walls, mini wildflower strips, pollinator planting, ponds and nest pockets wrapped around a central seating area for people to enjoy the diversity of life that can thrive in a small space.

Reclaimed and waste materials reign supreme: reclaimed sleepers and scaff boards, crushed stone is used for the seating areas, waste stone off cuts from our local quarry are used for the facing stones in the gabion walls and waste materials are used to fill the centre of the gabions.

PROJECT RHS Hampton Court Garden Festival
DURATION Summer 2023
STATUS Completed