We’re delighted to share that The Empowerment Garden has impressed the Judges and been awarded a Silver Medal! We couldn’t be prouder of our service users, volunteers and the wider team that helped put this garden together.
The Empowerment Garden carries a message about how people can be empowered and unified through horticulture. Focusing on biophilia, the tendency to interact or be closely associated with other forms of life in nature, strengthening our connections to food and how it’s grown is something that we can all relate to and benefit from.
It is a representation of how you can improve your health and wellbeing by spending time in nature, taking ownership of the environment around you and contributing to positive climate action by growing your own fresh produce.
The garden was designed and constructed by our service users and volunteers, who benefitted from the invaluable support given by the Garden 360 team. Garden 360 gave their time for free, sharing their skills and knowledge with our service users and helping with every aspect of the build.
We’re also extremely grateful to M&Y Maintenance and Construction, Eric Wright Charitable Trust and PDS Doorsets who all supported with funding the garden, sourcing materials and logistics.
Our day one highlights:
The RHS Flower Show at Tatton Park welcomed more than 10,000 visitors yesterday and we were delighted that so many of them stopped by to see The Empowerment Garden!
With interest in the garden already high, the team from Gardeners World stopped by to film some content for Friday’s episode! Make sure you’re tuned in on Friday 21st July, 7pm on BBC2 to see Joe Swift and Frances Tophill enjoying our little corner of Tatton.
Service User, Nathan, had a busy day talking to the visitors who all wanted to know more about the garden. When we got a moment, we went to visit our friend Jason Williams, (perhaps better known as the Cloud Gardener) and experience Cloud Alley, a beautiful project highlighting how we can reclaim unused urban spaces.
Jason was kind enough to do an interview with Nathan for his YouTube channel, which was an amazing experience!
We had lots of great conversions with school children who came to the show about the food growing on our garden, and were so pleased to hear so many of them tell us about the food they were growing at home too.
We can’t wait to see what the rest of the show will bring!
We’d love to see our garden with the People’s Choice award for a 4th consecutive year. If you can spare a moment to vote for us in the Terraced Garden Category, please click here. https://www.rhs.org.uk/shows-events/rhs-flower-show-tatton-park/rhs-peoples-choice-award