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The Importance of Collaboration for a Greener and More Sustainable Environment
2 April 2015

When you work in an industry like horticulture, it’s important to collaborate with other like-minded professionals to create something that has the capacity to move the industry forward. Exhibitions and shows provide the perfect opportunity for companies to link up with landscape gardeners, enabling their innovative concepts to become a reality.

For next month’s RHS Cardiff (17-19), the team at Best4hedging has teamed up with award-winning landscaper Robert Hughes, to help make his vision of an idyllic office life a reality, with a new dual-purpose concept garden.

Inspired by a visit to architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, the ‘Office Box’ concept is an urban sustainable space designed to allow us to work, create and ‘think freely’ outdoors, whilst contrasting and complementing nature.

The open-air office features a cleverly hidden foldout desk, benches and contemporary shelving cubes. The ordered, geometric style is mirrored in the planting and Box cube topiary, designed by Hughes and supplied by Best4hedging.

An L-shaped pool adds tranquillity and harmony to the raised patio area, with the whole garden designed for compact spaces, in line with the ‘Simple Spaces: Amazing Places’ RHS theme showing how small areas can be transformed into inspiring and amazing gardens.

But there’s more to it than simply creating a garden that is beautiful in its appearance. By providing the plans for an outdoor workspace, Hughes encourages desk dwelling architects to take their work outdoors, something he believes is vital in maintaining and improving our environment for the self, those around us and for wildlife – as well as providing clarity, inspiration and improving productivity.

“From the calming elements of the pond, the green roof soaking up large quantities of water which would normally end up in our congested drains, to the flowers providing pollen for insects and seeds for birds, Office Box is a garden which works on many levels to improve several aspects of ones environment”, Hughes explains.

Similarly, other landscapers in the ‘Simple Spaces: Amazing Places’ category at RHS Cardiff are focusing on encouraging those that live in an urban environment to utilise what little space they might have, for the promotion of health and wellbeing, wildlife and biodiversity

Also exhibiting at RHS Cardiff, Victoria Wade has developed a space for people to ‘grow their own’; illustrating that even in the smallest of spaces the kitchen can be taken outdoors for al fresco cooking and dining on balmy summer evenings. She’s even managed to incorporate a chicken coop into her creative garden design.

Exhibitor Shani Lawrence has created a wildlife haven that encourages families to get involved in the outdoors, whilst promoting the importance of gardening for wildlife such as birds, insects and hedgehogs.

As with all aspects of design, gardeners have a responsibility to be innovative in improving our environment – for the people, wildlife and plants that inhabit it.

For more information on the exhibitors at the RHS Cardiff show, visit the website.