Chelsea gold-winning garden finds new home

Work is under way to relocate a gold-winning RHS Chelsea Flower Show garden designed for young people to a space that supports them.

Designer Patrick Clarke created the sanctuary for The Children's Society, and it will now be replanted at a youth club in Vandyke Road, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire.

The society wanted the garden at the event to shine "a light on the growing crisis in young people's mental health and wellbeing".

Relocation work was expected to be completed by July. The plants would then need time to bed in before the space could be opened as an outdoor wellbeing hub.

The garden, which took 10 months to design, featured prickly poppies, a bird's nest fern, verbascum arcturus, and discarded materials reclaimed and transformed into a path, pergola, water feature and seating.

In a social media post, Clarke said it was a place where young people "can just be and turn off whatever worries [they] might have out there in the outside world".

"The garden being built and planted next to the youth centre is a way of gifting that back to them, The Children's Society and the wider community of Leighton Buzzard."

The garden's design was inspired by the Japanese philosophy of 'wabi-sabi', which is the belief in finding beauty in imperfection and the re-crafting of discarded materials.

"Perfection is the most debilitating thing for young people because it's something that is unattainable, and when they're bombarded with images of perfection on social media, that is very, I think, threatening to people's mental health," Clarke said.

Elements of the garden were created through workshops with teenagers.

The 28 glass panels, which fitted into a recycled steel canopy, came out of conversations about "what it feels like to be outdoors," he added.

The Children's Society said the garden would become an outdoor wellbeing hub where young people could speak with a trained practitioner or take part in weekly group sessions with other service users.

Mark Russell, chief executive, said: "We are facing nothing short of a 'happiness recession' among our teenagers, and it's time we made their wellbeing a national priority.

"We want to expand our network of support spaces across the UK – safe, welcoming environments where young people can speak to trained specialists when they need it most.

"These spaces will give teenagers, no matter their background or postcode, someone who will listen and help them build hope and resilience for a brighter future."

Do you have a story suggestion for Beds, Herts or Bucks? Contact us below.

Follow Beds, Herts and Bucks news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.