01673 818443Thanks to Horticulture Week for this article:
The Food and Environment Research Agency has commissioned designer Jo Thompson to create a garden for next year's centenary RHS Chelsea Flower Show which will encourage the public to play their part in protecting native trees.
On one side of the garden there wil be an avenue of dead trees leading to a deep and dark pool of water surrounding an island holding a single ash seedling.
On the other, a sunken garden filled with blue, white and yellow plants, bordered by towering trees.
Concrete panels etched with magnified images of Chalara and Phytophthera partly surround the garden.
Said Thompson: "We are increasingly guilty of taking our landscapes for granted. Our ancestors nurtured these landscapes in the patient knowledge that they would never see them fully grown but future generations would.
"I'm keen that we follow their lead - for example we can safeguard our horticultural heritage through simple actions such as the careful buying of plants and large specimen trees and shrubs from trusted growers."
Hilliers and Kelways will supply the living specimen trees including oak, ash, horse chestnut, the New Horizon elm, birch, Acer campestre, a form of London Plane and Scots pine.
All come from the UK although a special disease resistant variety of the elm was initially propagated in Germany.
For more information about the garden, click here for a link to Fera's press release.
