Garden Predictions 2022

Supporting Local Wildlife

Our gardens are being gradually warmed and coaxed out of their winter sleep – and our Instagram is suddenly full of sightings of the very first blossoms.

RHS Chelsea Flower Show is always buzzing with portents and predictions, so who better to to ask for her insights for the seasons ahead than Ann-Marie Powell, who will be leading on the design of our display at the Flower Show in May. Ann-Marie says she just can’t wait for Spring to arrive, and the warmer colours as the crocus and daffodil hoards start to appear. Joyful and exuberant by nature, Ann-Marie will of course prioritise colour in our Chelsea display too – but she points out that far more important than our own human attraction to colourful arrays, is the important role colour plays in drawing bees to the garden: “Well, without bees, we’re all finished!..” she pointed out, then, a little more encouragingly, ‘… if you support the wildlife, then the wildlife supports you.” I foresee a Chelsea Flower Show garden buzzing with happy bees and ablaze with colour for this coming May – at least our little Main Avenue corner of it will be!

Gardening for wellbeing

We also caught up with Olivia Chapple, who runs charity Horatio’s Garden. The thought of patients, over the past couple of years in these spinal injury units coping with surgery and treatment, not to mention the burden of psychological trauma, without, in pandemic hospital protocol, the visits of family, is almost unbearable. Yet Horatio’s Gardens provide a verdant and peaceful environment to find some privacy, comfort and fresh air, and thankfully the team has managed to keep workshops and therapies going – a small miracle in an insane situation. Olivia describes the experience of patients and their families:
“I have seen first hand the healing power of nature; how it comforts and enhances wellbeing and how gardens act as havens for reflection, conversation and rehabilitation.”

Horatio’s Garden is preparing to open their sixth garden at the Welsh Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Centre in Cardiff this Spring. Designed by award-winning Welsh garden designer, Sarah Price, the garden will support spinal injury patients from across Wales, providing them with a beautiful accessible garden to enjoy with friends and family, as well as a range of therapies and activities provided by the Head Gardener and volunteers. Never standing still for a moment, fundraising is underway for their seventh garden at Musgrave Park Hospital in Belfast, to be designed by eight-time RHS Chelsea Gold Medal winning designer, Andy Sturgeon. Gaze Burvill is so proud to have been chosen to provide furniture, some of it specially adapted for wheelchair users, for these beautiful healing gardens. We will keep you tabbed of course, but for information, or to support this extraordinary mission, please visit www.horatiosgarden.org.uk

Embracing social spaces

There may be more garden parties this year, or possibly they will be beyond the pale (hope not!). But we have embraced the idea of gathering together outside – and in almost any kind of weather. There are a few tricks we have learnt. A blanket – or throw – over the knees is super cosy, as is a blanket to sit on too, if you don’t have seat cushions. At Gaze Burvill we are seeing that people are looking for ‘gathering’ furniture pieces, for use year-round, like our new Curved Splash Lounge, to bring friends together in the round, perhaps circling a firepit – and, added bonus, these are lovely to look at when viewed from inside the house. Back to keeping warm, a luxury parasol like the TUUCI ones we supply, will keep off not just the sun and rain – also the dewy chill of a late summer evening,

So gardens are definitely good for healing. And for gathering together in, for welcoming our fellow planet-inhabitants (like the bees), and, wherever or whatever our green space is, large, tiny, country or town, we must take care to make it a space in which to be happy. Writing in Gardens Illustrated magazine, Katy Merrington, who is in charge of the beautiful gardens at Hepworth Wakefield, sums it up pretty well:

“I see gardens as habitats for our future, as hopeful places for healthy urban living – spaces to create experiences and make memories.”