With the arrival of spring, the RHS Malvern Spring Festival, a delightful extravaganza that celebrates all things gardening, flowers, and plants, also makes a return from May 9-12, 2024 at the famed Three Counties Showground. In the course of the four-day gardening showcase — held in association with My Pension Expert — the carnival is expected to feature a journey of discovery in the gardening space.
This year’s feature garden for the event, the Secret Escape, is by RHS gold medal-winning Jamie Langlands, the Lead Designer at Oxford Garden Design. He was responsible for last year’s ‘Best in Show’ and ‘People’s Choice’ for The Wildlife Trusts: Wilder Spaces garden. The Secret Escape is an enthralling hidden grove in which there’s an avant-garde dance floor surrounded by nature, with a DJ maintaining a constant groove.
Attractions That Are Artistic Reflections on Environmental Issues
The 2024 RHS Malvern Spring Festival will feature thought-provoking artistic reflections on environmental issues including inspirations by Elizabethan poet John Donne and Korean islands, as well as a brand-new Festival of Houseplants, all of which will, definitely, see the popular event live up to its standing for breaking new ground.
Access to the Secret Escape garden by Jamie will be through a ‘disco polytunnel’ filled with lush greenery and a mirror ball casting colorful reflections. The entire space has been carefully designed to blend seamlessly with the natural surroundings, while offering a contrast of untamed wilderness and cultured beauty, including upcycled marvels.
There are even more interesting features to experience!
Basically, this year will see eight RHS-Judged show gardens that promise a diverse mix of designs reflecting traditional ideas and avant-garde concepts.
For instance, renowned designer David Wyndham Lewis, well known for his work at the Roof Gardens in Kensington, will be bringing a sample of the Laskett in Spring to Malvern; both as an homage to the creators of the famous Herefordshire Garden, Sir Roy Strong CH and his late wife Julia Trevelyan Oman CBE, and to raise awareness of Perennial, the charity for everyone working in, or retired from horticulture. Sir Roy gifted the Laskett Garden in Herefordshire to Perennial in 2021.
David’s show garden, the Laskett - which is one of Perennial’s Gardens - an Autobiographical Garden, will comprise representations of the iconic Victoria and Albert Temple, yew topiary and woodland planting, along with spring bulbs, and border auriculas.
Three-times Malvern gold medal winner Mark Draper will, similarly, be making a return to the festival with the Cotswold Garden, the highlights of which will include a self-supporting stone dome, over which a natural spring will run on its way through the garden and into a stream, and a timber pergola set on staddle stones.
There will, also, be distinctive dining and lounging areas, meadow planting, and beautiful borders at the Cotswold Garden by Mark who is a designer for Graduate Gardeners, which has a long association with the festival and celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.
More Unique Gardens Whose Charm You Need to Experience
What’s more, the Botanic Blonde, Laura Ashton-Phillips will be looking to add to her Malvern silver and bronze medals achieved in 2023 and 2022 with ‘Eat, Drink and Be Rosemary’, a native wild space and kitchen garden combination. Patients at Gloucester’s Wotton Lawn Hospital are helping to grow some of the plants and afterward, everything will be absorbed into a children’s wellbeing garden at Gloucester Royal Hospital.
Lu Wenjuan and Yun Sunmi’s Green Islands Garden, inspired by the John Donne poem ‘No Man is an Island’ and the breathtaking natural scenery of Korean islands will also feature in the festival. This artistic garden seeks to reflect the relationship between people and nature, with resilient planting and the use of moss among the stand-out features.
Meanwhile, Suzy Dean, a pediatric intensive care consultant at Bristol Children’s Hospital, will be presenting the Grand Appeal Garden, a place for childlike exploration and adventure with woodland-inspired planting. The Grand Appeal charity provides places for families to stay when their children are in hospital. Suzy, a director of Ammil Garden Design, completed a diploma at the Bristol Garden Design School in 2022 and now balances two careers.
Michael Lote’s garden, ‘It Doesn’t Have to Cost the Earth’ is, on the other hand, based on real gardens in many housing developments around the UK and will highlight the need to reinstate habitat for native wildlife that has been impacted by property construction. Representatives from the Soil Association will be available at the garden throughout the show to answer questions about the subject of soil health. Following the festival, Michael’s garden will be repurposed for community benefit at Woodoaks Farm in Hertfordshire.
Still in the festival, Kerianne Fitzpatrick and TJ Kennedy will present ‘the Macmillan Legacy Garden’, a thought-provoking circular garden offering visitors the chance to experience plants at different growth stages alongside the human lifecycle.
Ian McBain’s ‘Concrete 2.0’, which also features in the festival, seeks to highlight the need to use reclaimed and recycled materials in gardens, promote the responsible use of water, as well as rethink paving options, and opt for the use of sustainable materials.
In addition to the show gardens, children from 11 schools across Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, and Herefordshire will be showing off their creativity with mini-plots at the School Gardens, based on the theme ‘The Magic of Music’.
A Chance to Get up Close and Personal With a Variety of Plants on Display
Malvern is renowned for its displays of plants. And with more than fifty nurseries exhibiting in the Floral Marquee and many more offering a tempting array in the Plant Village and Pavilions, one can expect to find everything from native blooms from new to Malvern Swansea-based Celtic Wildflowers to various phalaenopsis, cattleyas, dendrobiums, and masdevallias (orange) African species from Laura Hobbs Orchids of Sussex.
The event presents an opportunity to get up close and personal with plants like eucalyptus and discover the value of this climate change-resilient tree with a walk-through display combining lofty taller varieties and smaller types that visitors can touch and smell.
It will see the RHS Master Grower Grafton Nursery Ltd from Worcestershire relating the history of eucalyptus, which first came to the UK with Captain Cook’s third expedition to Tasmania in 1777, and showcasing its various uses; from floristry to flood amelioration.
The display will also draw attention to the smaller dwarf species and cultivars such as the fabulous bushy ‘France Bleu’, which has neat bright blue adult foliage sitting beneath rose-pink new growth and specially-pruned bushy fragrant Eucalyptus archeri shrubs.
As previously indicated, new to this year’s event is a Festival of Houseplants, in collaboration with Green Rooms Market. It offers an opportunity to step into a world of indoor greenery. One can expect vibrant botanical displays from much-loved classics to rare and exotic specimens, engaging workshops from expert horticulturalists and popular social media personalities, plus an abundance of shopping opportunities.
It, definitely, is a four-day event worth its while, which you should attend and immerse yourself in the experience!
P.S: Tickets for the RHS Malvern Spring Festival 2024 start from just £15 for a new ‘Taster Ticket’ (with under-16s free of charge) and can be bought at the RHS Malvern Spring Festival website.
All photos courtesy of RHS Malvern Spring Festival 2024.
