RHS Britain in Bloom 60th Anniversary: Gardening for People and Planet

Marking the 60th anniversary of RHS Britain in Bloom, this garden designed by father and son duo, Jon and James Wheatley, celebrates the positive impacts of community gardening. The garden encapsulates the last 60 years of Bloom, from its inception in the 1960s, to the current day. The theme for Bloom’s 60th anniversary is friendship and the garden is designed to create a space where people in the community can come together, appreciate the taste, scent, sounds and visual impact of the garden, or make new connections at a ‘friendship bench’. The design includes a variety of planting conditions. A grass path, flanked with vibrant beds of yellow and orange, passes floral features and art in the landscape as it sweeps up to the central platform seating area. On one side is a wild meadow suppling nectar-rich flowers for a cluster of beehives, which border wetland margins and shade planting and gives way to woodland and ferns. This year, to celebrate Bloom, the RHS will be giving more than 2million friendship flower seeds out to groups for them grow, cut and give away as bouquets in their communities, and these British cut flowers are incorporated into the Hampton Court garden design. A wild vegetable garden gives a fresh take on grow your own in a garden which both celebrates the traditions of the past and looks forward to a blooming future.