Sarah Eberle hopes to inspire people to nurture where town and countryside meet and nature is need of protection
Stinging nettles, buttercups, broken crockery, fly-tipped flowers and a discarded gnome are not the usual hallmarks of an RHS Chelsea flower show garden.
But this year’s On the Edge garden by Sarah Eberle – the most decorated designer at Chelsea – is designed not to look like a garden at all, rather to transport its visitors to the liminal spaces on the outskirts of towns where the countryside begins and nature is in critical need of protection.
“The garden is about the fringe lands of towns and cities – and how vulnerable they are to development,” said Eberle, who has created the garden for the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) to mark the charity’s centenary year. “There is very much a feel of the countryside to it, but with a town edge coming in, in its plant material.”
Right at the front is its centrepiece: a fallen mature tree sculpted into a reclining female figure by the chainsaw carver Chris Wood, “a mixture of stone and timber carved from a sequoia that’s fallen on this piece of edgelands”, said Eberle.
