Welsh Slate helps new gardens debut at RHS Chelsea

New container gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show feature Welsh Slate and Breedon Special Aggregates.

Natural landscaping products by Welsh Slate and Breedon Special Aggregates helped Covid-conceived container gardens debut at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

Along with balcony gardens, the new container gardens category provided plenty of ideas for using containers to maximise outdoor space or for those wanting to take their gardens with them when they move.

The 4m x 3m spaces featured an array of container styles from repurposed IBCs (Intermediate Bulk Containers) planted to resemble tiny forests, to hand-built ceramics, powder-coated metal and galvanised zinc containers full of lush, playful and exotic planting.

Welsh Slate’s Cwt-Y-Bugail paving and several decorative aggregates by Breedon Special Aggregates were used on a total of four of the new container gardens designed by up-and-coming designers in conjunction with established landscape designer Paul Hervey-Brookes who regularly uses Welsh Slate and Breedon Golden Amber self-binding gravel at the show.

Cwt-Y-Bugail dark blue grey riven 600mm x 300mm paving featured on the “Pop Street Garden” designed by John McPherson as a space to jump-start the transition from ‘lockdown to on-the-town’. Taking inspiration from pop culture references including contemporary pop art and street art, his garden was bright, bold and playful.

Decorative aggregates were also chosen from the Breedon Special Aggregates range for three other container gardens.

Some 0.6m2 of Breedon’s 20mm Cornish Silver Granite aggregate was used on the “IBC Pocket Forest Garden” designed by Sara Edwards. Inspired by the balconies of Milan’s Bosco Verticale and tiny urban forests utilising the Miyawaki method of creating diverse multi-layered forest, this garden was a haven for wildlife built by repurposing IBCs into a sanctuary of trees beloved by wildlife.

The “Stolen Soul Garden” designed by Anna Dabrowska-Jaudi, which featured Breedon Golden Amber gravel, the only self-binding gravel to hold The Royal Warrant, gave form to human emotions and draws attention to ‘invisible’ mental health issues.

Finally, 0.6m2 of Breedon’s 14mm Dowlow Grey decorative aggregate was used on the “A tranquil place in the city” container garden designed by Mika Misawa. This garden was for a city dweller seeking tranquillity and was arranged with plants in pots and with fragments of nature, such as a boulder and the Breedon stone chippings.

Paul Hervey-Brookes, who is also a RHS judge, said:

I was very happy to mentor these extremely promising young landscape designers and to see the Welsh Slate and Breedon products used so well in the gardens in this new category for the show.

All of the Welsh Slate paving and Breedon decorative aggregates featured in the container gardens at the 2021 Chelsea Flower Show can be bought online from www.ukstonedirect.com, while the Breedon products can also be bought from www.breedon-special-aggregates.co.uk