RHS Tatton Park 2022: The Petit Nuage Garden

Residents/workers in city centre skyscrapers don't get to enjoy traditional border gardens. Normally urban developers pick a handful of evergreen plants for borders & raised beds as a low cost, "eco-friendly" tick box exercise. The Petit Nuage Garden shows a realistic representation of a regular border on an urban development. However, using a similar planting scheme, it demonstrates how incorporating some low maintenance perennials to add some subtle colour could improve residents’ well-being & support biodiversity. The aim is to encourage urban developers to adopt more floral elements into urban green spaces creating new food sources, habitats & wildlife corridors allowing wildlife to move throughout the city and in turn positively impacting urban biodiversity.

 

The garden also offers developers two alternative suggestions to reduce costs further by handing over borders to the residents to grow and maintain. Not every resident has access to a balcony/outside space & the “Allotment” border would allow more people to connect to nature. The residents herb/perennial pollinator border allows residents/workers to grow and harvest their own fresh herbs whilst also maintaining & respecting corporate aesthetics. Understandably, urban developments don’t want traditional cottage gardens. The Petit Nuage garden aims to please both management, residents/workers & wildlife.

 

Clean & Green Castlefield are an excellent example of a community group using their borders to grow & connect to nature right in the city centre. Volunteers in the group have built up a community around their allotment but also helping to improve the area on local litter picking, opening a new garden on the Castlefield Viaduct and much more. 

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