Gold for the Leeds and Liverpool Canal in Chelsea ...

... and brown for the topless woman next door


A garden designed around a pair of lock gates such as you would see on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal has won a gold award at the Chelsea Flower Show.

The Hesco Garden 2010

The BBC's flower show website has a feature on The Hesco Garden 2010, but doesn't explain the "Hesco" in the title. A quick search reveals that Hesco Bastion is based in Leeds and makes "Concertainer units for the purposes of force protection, flood protection and erosion control." I assume they sponsored the garden, but I couldn't find anything about it on their website.*

The centrepiece of this garden is the canal and lock gates, a massive undertaking that links the themes that inspired this garden from Leeds City Council. Parks and green spaces are important to the residents of Leeds. The city celebrates its industrial heritage whilst creating green corridors - linking these areas where people can walk and enjoy the fresh air. Their Chelsea garden reflect this as the central lock gates of the garden are a walkway linking an area of natural planting to a contrasting urban space on the other side.

The lock design seems to be based on part of a staircase. Why else would there be a ladder from the lower level?

I don't know if the embedded video will always work as it seems to be an iPlayer clip. And it's badly out of sync.

And what was the biggest challenge for Leeds City Council? Building and moving the lock gates, according to designer Martin Walker.

*I've found the reference to the sponsors, who are, indeed, Hesco Bastion. It was on "the official website for "The HESCO Garden 2010"". This is a mixture of press release and blog, and looks really good. Here's an excerpt from the blog:

There were some slightly odd moments going on today, mainly centred on the garden next to ours, who clearly pushed the boat out to try and get some attention. Firstly they had a topless woman covered head to toe in brown paint (I kid you not!) dancing around their garden to classical music, then they had someone who looked a lot like Ronnie Wood from the Rolling Stones (couldn’t be sure if it actually was or not) talking utter gibberish including some truly awful poetry which just had everyone shaking their heads in bemusement. Then they went back to the classical theme, bringing violin quartet Scala onto the garden where they put on a performance with the volume set to ear-splitting level. What the RHS members thought of it all is anyone’s guess….

We intend to be at the Crick boat show tomorrow (Sunday), so we'll look out for other bloggers there.