Photo credit: The Planting Studio

About the garden

This garden will transform a prominent, neglected and unloved site at a major arterial route and road junction into a beautiful gateway garden for the neighbourhood centre of Maindee, Newport.

It has been co-created with the community-led charity, Maindee Unlimited, and their volunteer gardening team, Greening Maindee, who aim to transform underused spaces into greener, safer and attractive areas for people and wildlife. Maindee has the least amount of green space in Newport.

Designed in close relation to the actual site where the garden will be relocated, the Show Garden draws attention to how the most unlikely of spaces can be revitalised into welcoming green spaces through community initiatives. A striking trompe l’oeil mural wall created by local artist, Andy O’Rourke provides an engaging and colourful backdrop to the garden and runs along a main desire line/path enveloped and softened by planting.

Additional pathways draw people through trees and resilient, naturalistic planting into a central area featuring generous and robust curved bespoke gabion seating and planters. These have been designed to echo the art deco inspired shapes in the garden and provide durable/robust public seating.

The steel seating is hand crafted by Simon Probyn Sculpture in large units for public use. They form the visual and communal centrepiece for the garden and are designed for people, plants and habitat. The seating/planters also involve community businesses Reseiclo who specialise in wood cutting and recycling and Mon Timber wood suppliers.

Who or what is the design inspiration for the garden?

The design (shapework) is inspired by two of Maindee’s iconic art deco buildings – the former swimming pool and cinema. The mural links to other colourful murals across the district and is part of the Full Colour Maindee initiative to work with artists to improve the local environment. The planting approach is inspired by larger public projects by Nigel Dunnett.

Who is this garden for?

A gateway garden and public space for the residents of Maindee.

Where is the garden set?

On the junction of Wharf Rd and Chepstow Rd, Maindee, Newport.

Key take aways from the garden

The potential for transforming and greening many neglected and underused urban spaces when driven by vision and passion of local communities and activists.

The important work carried out by local communities to improve urban spaces for people.

Highlights or themes to notice/know

Public urban planting can be naturalistic, colourful and connect us to our need for nature. These spaces can be at the same time robust and artful as demonstrated by the bespoke seating and planters, sculpture and artwork presented within the garden.

Plants can be selected for their resilience to cope with the harsh environments of urban spaces and a need for lower maintenance.

Public spaces rely on community support and are led by volunteer groups who dedicate time and energy to making grey spaces green. These spaces are best when co-designed with the people who know them best and will be their custodians and users in the future.

Topical or newsworthy elements within the garden

Greening Maindee is supported by a UK-wide initiative called ‘Nature Neighbourhoods’ which was launched by the People’s Plan for Nature Partnership in 2023. The project supports community organisations across the UK to create people powered plans for nature in their neighbourhoods, helping to tackle the global nature and climate crisis at local level. The RSPB, National Trust and WWF are taking the lead on the project, delivered in conjunction with 18 community-led organisations with Greening Maindee being one of them. The project is being funded by the National Lottery Community Fund and the Co-op.

How does the garden reflect the sponsor’s/charity’s aims or key messages?

Maindee is a highly populated inner city environment that has lacked quality accessible green space for decades. Greening Maindee / Maindee Unlimited’s aim is to create productive healthy, convivial public spaces on neglected pockets of land for the benefit of local residents, whilst enhancing biodiversity in the process.

During lockdown, many people without access to a garden suffered considerably due to the lack of quality green/recreational outdoor space, vital for their physical and mental health. This chronic situation has brought into sharp focus just how important urban greening is for the overall wellbeing of the wider community and how we must redouble our efforts to create healthy, safe, nature rich spaces for local people. A local resident survey reflected this, with the results showing a need for greening the neighbourhood is a top priority.

The proposed Gateway Garden will be established in the very heart of Maindee – inviting people to come together in a safe and nature filled environment. The aspiration is for the garden to become a wonderful focal point for Maindee. A place where residents can take ownership going forward, and appreciate its social and recreational value long into the future.

This project follows a number of initiatives to improve the local district centre including street planters, pop up gardens, green infrastructure and artist murals and installations.

The aim is to make radical improvements to the use of local public space for walking, cycling and recreation and help support the local daytime and night-time economies by making the areas safer and more attractive.

Current or upcoming gardening trends in the design

Planting into brick/rubble substrate to reflect the poor soil conditions on site and encourage tougher/resilient plantings for lower maintenance. Naturalistic planting to encourage wildlife and wellbeing.

Hedging, trees, shrubs and plants suited to an urban environment and planting to reduce impact of air pollution.

Gabion seats for additional shelter/habitat artfully designed and robust/durable for location.

Where will the garden be relocated?

Maindee, Newport immediately after the show. There will be an garden opening and celebration at the end of May.

Sustainability

The garden uses a balanced proportion of planting to hard landscaping. Additionally, hard landscaping areas are created using natural gravel pathways.

The plants have been chosen to avoid long term watering and displayed in a substrate of rubble mulch.

A planter sculpture bound for Wharf Road will be presented as an infiltration planter connected to a gutter/downpipe on the wall to show people ideas for slowing down storm water run-off by redirecting it back into a garden.

Sustainable building methods, materials or technologies used to help minimise the garden’s environmental impact

Natural self binding gravels and natural stone and brick/rubble substrate instead of topsoil/soil.

The use of concrete is omitted – geo grids in place of concrete base for the seating units and screw piling for the feature wall.

Ways the garden promotes environmental responsibility /sustainability

At present, the pocket of land where the garden will be relocated is a scruffy, unloved corner plot that serves no purpose other than attracting litter.

Once relocated, the garden will have the power to capture peoples imaginations, helping them to visualise the potential of redundant spaces where they live and galvanize them into action.

The greening of a high density urban neighbourhood is particularly important with high levels of pollution. The garden responds to this by using pollution filtering trees and plants. This links in with a strategic drive to reduce effects of air pollution through planting schemes already in place such as the installation of a ‘clean air’ garden in the front of the library, with SuDS planters linking to the downpipes and a range of green infrastructure.

Sustainable water management

• Environmentally sensitive use of hard landscaping
• Resilient planting design (to cope with increased climatic extremes)
• Drought-tolerant planting with soil amendment (such as gravel/rock gardens, mulching)
• Sustainable drainage systems (SuDS)
• Rain or grey-water harvesting, storage and re-use

Plants

There will be around 2,000 individual plants including bulbs in the garden.

New or statement plants

A layered planting scheme will provide as much interest through the seasons as possible through colour and structure from multistem and upright ‘Streetwise Trees’, underplanted with perennials, bulbs and seasonal shrubs.

 Five key plants 

• Taxus baccata (English yew) – slow growing for easier maintenance, pollution filtering and wildlife friendly.
• “Streetwise Trees” such as Acer palmatum ‘Globosum’ developed by Hillier for urban spaces providing colour and good for wildlife without growing too large.
• Cotoneaster franchetii (Franchet’s cotoneaster) -a great plant for pollution absorption and good in naturalistic schemes
• Ornamental grasses – long seasonal interest and one cut or comb through in February so lower maintenance such as Anemanthele (pheasant’s tail grass).
• Spring bulbs – provide a burst of colour and early pollen and are a relatively low cost solution to increasing diversity in planting including Allium siculum (Sicilian honey garlic) (syn. Nectaroscordum).
• Euphorbia (spurge) and Hylotelephium as key anchor plants with long season of shape and colour.

Unsung plant heroes of the gardening world

Yew is normally associated with stately homes and churches but is used within the garden to create an evergreen structural form, to filter pollution and habitat for wildlife.

Cotoneaster might be underappreciated but there are many types from small low growing, to sprawling and training all with berries for birds and for sun or shade. There will be different varieties used within this garden.

Plant suppliers

• Hillier – work with Newport City Council on a regular basis and have developed trees specifically for the urban environment
• Wyevale Garden Centre – who are local to the show
• Hortus Loci – peat free and wide selection of resilient plants and lesser known varieties

Plant lists are provided by the designer of the garden as a guide to the plants they hope to use in the garden based on the time of year, the location and the client brief. The plants that feature at the Show depends on a variety of factors such as weather during the growing season and availability. While the designers try to update lists where possible, the accuracy of the list cannot be guaranteed.

About the designers

Emily Crowley-Wroe creates naturalistic gardens for homeowners in the Cotswolds where she grew up and now lives. Her design studio, April House Garden Design, is based in Bourton-on-the-Water, where she works on a wide range of projects from small courtyard gardens to larger countryside gardens.

Since graduating from the Cotswold Gardening School in 2020 Emily dived into the world of Show Gardens, including The Hide Garden, which received RHS Silver-gilt medal and Best Show Garden in 2022, and HomeAway Garden, which also was awarded RHS Silver-gilt in 2023 at RHS Malvern Spring Festival.

Emily is a keen gardener and allotment owner and spends as much time as possible experimenting with growing flowers and vegetables from seed, and testing plant combinations at home.

What are the advantages of designing a garden at the show?

Emily says, “I wanted to create a garden for a charitable organisation. I came across the Nature Neighbourhoods project and through them met the team in Maindee and visited their Greening Maindee projects. It’s a challenging brief and a difficult environment, but an opportunity to support and publicise the fantastic work they do to improve grey urban environments and bring nature into the city.”