Graduate Gardeners swept the board at the recent RHS Malvern Spring Festival, with their 'Cotswold Garden' winning a prestigious Gold Medal and receiving the Best in Show Garden and the Best Construction awards.
This is the company's eighth Gold Medal at Malvern, along with its sixth award for Best Show Garden. For designer Mark Draper it's both a fourth Gold Medal and Best in Show Award.
These successes coincided with Graduate Gardeners celebrating 50 years in landscape design.
Working for clients in Cheltenham, Cirencester, Gloucester and the surrounding counties and Cotswolds, from its purpose-built nursery in Bisley, near Stroud, the design, build and maintenance teams are proud of the company's long-standing heritage curating gardens in towns and villages across the Cotswolds.
The design firm’s team of six at RHS Malvern, led by foreman Dave Newns, built the garden over 120 man-days from mid-April until the show in May, with Mark Draper leading the planting team. The garden was funded by Graduate Gardeners, with suppliers loaning the paving, furniture, and kitchen. The public enjoyed seeing a garden that they could take home and replicate in their own spaces. Even if they couldn't repeat it in its entirety, it had so many separate elements that there was something for everyone.
The garden was split into thirds, with three clearly separate areas: dining, lounge, and meadow, although each section flowed seamlessly into the next.
The garden was accessed through a door from a courtyard, which opened into a raised dining area, nestled in a corner of old dry-stone walls and covered by a Douglas Fir pergola. The front supports of the pergola were set on ancient staddle stones, sitting in the surrounding York Stone paving. The pergola provided a sense of enclosure while allowing the free flow of light and air, and the lovely effect of dappled sunlight on the walling, changing throughout the day.
The dining table, by Bramblecrest, had seating for eight, with socialising space for many more, along with a Whistler kitchen complete with barbecue and rotisserie. Below the dining area was a ‘Lutyens’ style dry stone dome feature set into the wall, out of which a natural spring flowed down through a rill, made of Yorkstone cobble setts, that ran the whole length along the front of the garden. This flowed into an old stone trough sitting in a stream that ran from the rear of the wildflower meadow.
Borders ran either side of the rill, dotted with yew balls of varying sizes and infilled with perennials, the standout plants being Cirsium Rivulare ‘Atropurpureum’ and Veronica gentianoides, the latter planted overhanging the rill.
Steps ran down from the dining area into an enclosed seating area, with a Bramblecrest sofa and two chairs sitting around a low rectangular table. The area was paved with the same Yorkstone setts as the rill. Relaxed and subdued tones of the planting, with Euonymus alatus just breaking into leaf, made this a calming area to sit and chill, with the gentle trickle of the rill water running through. The area had a hawthorn hedge to the rear and a rusted estate fence with a gate, separating it from the meadow area, which was sown with a mix of 34 wildflower varieties, although the ragged Robin was predominant at the show, with ox-eye daisies and red campion just about to break open. A mown path ran from the gate, through the meadow and over an old oak sleeper bridge, crossing the small stream that ran from the back of the meadow to the front, where it picked up the outflow from the rill. The stream was lined with old moss-covered stone, fallen branches, and marginal aquatic plants.
Mark Draper said: 'We were thrilled to win these awards for the team. Inspired by materials and designs across our recent Cotswold projects, this garden is scalable and works in every plot size. With sustainability in mind all the show plants and hard landscaping are already now being used in other Gloucestershire projects.'
