A garden that won a silver award at the RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Show Festival will be relocated to the Leytonstone estate shortly, reports Rana Rastegari
An award-winning garden that was featured at the prestigious RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Show Festival will be relocated to the Fred Wigg and John Walsh towers in Leytonstone.
Titled ‘Garden of Renewal – Nature’s Embrace’, the garden’s designer Gaida Francois says she aimed to showcase how anyone can create a beautiful garden without a financial sponsor. The Walthamstow based garden designer adds that most of the plants were grown in her own garden and have been each selected to represent the different stages of motherhood.
The garden is crafted with vibrant colours and textures that are carefully arranged to create a sense of “tranquillity and wonder”, as described by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS). The theme of the show was biodiversity, suitability and healing and thus, the garden showcases a display of native flora.
The key features of the design include meandering paths, a secluded seating area and numerous water features. It was inspired by the intricate beauty of natural ecosystems and Giada’s aim was to represent the life cycle.
The central path, which is shaped to represent an embryo, has stepping stones to represent the stages of life from conception to birth. The design aims to create a sense of the impact of motherhood and how it is intertwined with nature.
Giada told the Echo that her inspiration came from “the healing connection that we have with mother nature. It is an autobiography, a bit. The layout is an embryo and represents the stages of life.”
”Every plant has got a meaning, the daisy for example represents a eureka moment, introspection,” she continued.
“The process was largely managed by Lancaster Garden Centre, they’ve been absolutely brilliant because they offered me free landscaping at the show. We had some crowdfunding too, one tree has been bought through crowdfunding”.
Giada created many of the pieces in the garden alongside her 20-year-old son, Kevin Francois, who built many of the structures such as chairs in the garden. Gaida adds that “they built a real connection” through working on the show together.
She said: “It physically helped me to have a young person by my side, too. We built all the chairs together, he was in charge of building everything at home with wood, screws and he did a lot of it by hand.”
Giada hopes that her work can inspire other single mothers to pursue their passions and find their personal sense of renewal that she has found in nature. She wants to depict the challenges, opportunities and joys of motherhood and highlight that “the negative is necessary to appreciate the good, even to stop and think.”
On her plans for the garden’s relocation to the Fred Wigg and John Walsh towers, she said: “We’ll put a mini library with books for kids onto the shelves and everyone can get involved. It’s been an absolute journey but the main thing is the people and the sense of community.”
Find out more about the garden here
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