Garden Construction At RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival
Acacia Gardens was honoured to undertake three prominent garden construction projects at the RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival 2024, affirming our reputation as expert show garden contractors. Our team skilfully crafted The Way of St James Show Garden, The Making Sense Garden (Get Started Gardens), and The Flower Power Field (which we also designed). Despite challenging heatwave conditions, our dedication and expertise earned two silver medals. The judges praised our construction work as excellent and very good, affirming our reputation as expert show garden and luxury landscape contractors. The Way of St James and The Making Sense Garden both won the People’s Choice Awards for their categories, which was the icing on the cake!
The Way Of St James Show Garden
Voted People’s Choice Show Best Show Garden
Silver Medal Winner
Garden Construction Very Good
Designed by Nilufer Danis and sponsored by Axencia Turismo de Galicia /Tourist Office of Spain, The Way of St. James Garden captures the essence of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and the mystical forests of Galicia. The garden is inspired by St James, the patron saint of Spain. Created for a prominent Galician family, this garden in Galicia, Spain, is divided by tall hedges into ornamental, horticultural, and woodland areas. Metal arches with scented climbers, gravel paths, and granite paving enhance its romantic appeal. Familiar shrubs and perennial species pay homage to Galicia’s ancient forests. Key features include a pilgrim statue, Camino symbols, a water fountain, a natural pond, boulders, trees, and woodland planting. These elements evoke the pilgrims’ journey and create a mature, relaxing, natural ambience.
Garden Construction by Acacia Gardens with special thanks to Gareth Wilson (G.K. Wilson Garden & Landscape Consultancy Limited) and Riverdale Falls UK
The Making Sense Garden
Voted People’s Choice Best Get Started Garden
Silver Medal Winner
Garden Construction Excellent
Designed by Flora Scouarnec and Victoria Pease-Cox and sponsored by Scouarnec & Pease-Cox Garden Design, this unique garden is a sensory oasis crafted for individuals with smell and taste disorders. It heightens the senses of sight, sound, and touch, providing a therapeutic environment for exploration, relaxation, and social interaction. The garden features two lushly planted levels anchored by multi-stemmed trees with tactile bark in two corners. Herbaceous beds follow a loose planting scheme, allowing plants to interweave and self-seed over time. An inviting curved path with steps descends to a sunken seating area enveloped in greenery, offering a vantage point to admire the beautiful planting. Aged sculptural elements and rusted hanging chains add design layers for discovery. In contrast, a wall-mounted water feature adds a soothing splashing sound, enhancing the harmonious colour palette of cool tones with vibrant accents. The construction involved creating the sunken garden effect with a curved path and steps leading to the ground level.
Garden Construction by Acacia Gardens
The Flower Power Field
Designed by one of Acacia Garden’s designers, Kathryn Cox, the Flower Power Field pays tribute to the iconic Woodstock Festival, the birthplace of flower power. Sponsored by Ella James Living, with “Flower Power,” “Love,” and “Peace” artwork by Katiemo London, this garden evokes the spirit of the 1969 festival held in New York, a symbol of the hippie era. The garden imagines a relaxing space to unwind between watching bands, featuring a tepee pitched among a field of kaleidoscopic Asteraceae and sunlit ornamental grasses.
Garden construction and design by Acacia Gardens
I am immensely proud of the Acacia Gardens construction team for taking on the challenge of three projects at this year’s RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Festival. By having our landscape construction team carry out work across multiple projects, we maximised our people power, ensuring that each person’s time was used efficiently and cost-effectively. Our team successfully built three gardens in under three weeks, demonstrating our capabilities as landscape contractors and illustrating what we can achieve for our residential clients. Each garden presented unique challenges, but we persevered, and our hard work was recognised by the judges, who praised the construction of the gardens as excellent and very good. The Way of St James and The Making Sense Garden both won the People’s Choice Award for their category. Additionally, we designed the Flower Power Field, further showcasing that Acacia Gardens is a luxury garden design practice.
Herman Pobrati
Managing Director Acacia Gardens Ltd
