The Campaign to Protect Rural England Garden: 'On the Edge'

About this garden

The story

The 'On the Edge' garden highlights the often-overlooked edgelands - countryside areas on the fringes of towns and cities. These spaces, though undervalued and threatened, are vital for connecting people with nature in daily life. Created in CPRE's centenary year, the garden symbolises hope and resilience on our doorstep, and that with with the right care, these fragile places can recover and thrive for future generations.

Set on an imagined piece of undeveloped land on the urban fringe, key features include a fallen tree sculpted into a guardian figure (Gaia or Mother Nature), whose hand touches water from a shallow pool while her willow hair flows to form the top of a dry-stone wall snaking through the naturalistic landscape.

Naturalised garden plants from previous fly-tipping of garden waste, transform neglect into abundance. Planting is rich, diverse and textural, celebrating UK native flowering plants often dismissed as weeds but vital to our ecosystems. The design blends soft and hard boundaries and captures the essence of the rural-urban fringe, where countryside matters are a key part of daily life.

The garden will be relocated to a regenerated housing development in urban Sheffield, where the legacy of early campaigners will live on as a dynamic and thriving place with nature at its heart.