Express & Star

Award-winning Chelsea Flower Show garden to be re-built in Stafford

A garden which won a gold medal at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show is to be rebuilt in Stafford later this year.

Published
idverde operations director and designer of the garden Alistair Bayford with Duke and Duchess of Cambridge

The Family Monsters Garden, which was awarded a gold medal and named Best Artisan Garden, is to be rebuilt this autumn at Silkmore Children’s Centre, Stafford for families and the local community to enjoy.

The Family Monsters Garden celebrates 150 years of the national charity Family Action supporting families across the country.

The garden is designed to get people talking about the everyday pressures all families face but can find difficult to talk about, such as money, health and wellness, work and education, spending quality time together, and relationships.

Family Action is encouraging families to find ways to talk about issues to stop these from becoming overwhelming. The charity has made a film to illustrate these ‘family monsters’ and how we can face them together, which can be watched and shared at familymonstersproject.com

Having built the garden at Chelsea, a team of idverde’s apprentices will help to install the Family Monsters Garden in its new home and show local volunteers how to care for it long-term, giving future horticulturalists valuable experience in creating and maintaining green spaces.

Staffordshire County Council cabinet member for children and young people, Mark Sutton, said: “The Family Monsters Garden will create a calm space where children and parents will play, reflect and learn – and we hope it will bring in more families. The garden also fits in well with all the things we are trying to achieve with our families – health and wellbeing, tackling financial issues, lack of time together – and seeing a solution is achievable with a little hard work. It will also bring some sparkle to the area, and show our community that good things happen here.”