AT the RHS Chelsea Flower Show this year, Charlotte Harris and Hugo Bugg took home not only a gold medal for their thoughtful design for the Horatio’s Garden charity, but also won the top award of Best in Show.
The garden was a distillation of one that the team is designing for patients of The Princess Royal Spinal Injuries Centre in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, incorporating many of the features seen in SW3, which will open next year. The Chelsea judges were given the opportunity to move through the lush luxuriant planting in a wheelchair, following a beautiful and immaculately smooth terrazzo path, to experience what it will be like for patients.
A similarly considered approach—and pristine finish—underlies the studio’s work on this garden in the Chilterns, which forms between three and four acres of a 100-acre estate. The landscape goes back to Tudor times, but the present 20th-century house is Arts and Crafts in style and, in 2017, major works were undertaken to build a new west-facing wing. At that point, the owners brought in Harris Bugg Studio, initially to help with making a new garden on that side of the house. ‘We spent time with the owners,’ says Miss Harris, ‘walking around with them, hearing about what they liked and didn’t like and, gradually, started to unpick and to understand.’
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Tales as old as time
By appointing writers-in-residence to landscape locations, the National Trust is hoping to spark in us a new engagement with our ancient surroundings, finds Richard Smyth
Do the active farmer test
Farming is a profession, not a lifestyle choice’ and, therefore, the Budget is unfair
Night Thoughts by Howard Hodgkin
Charlotte Mullins comments on Moght Thoughts
SOS: save our wild salmon
Jane Wheatley examines the dire situation facing the king of fish
Into the deep
Beneath the crystal-clear, alien world of water lie the great piscean survivors of the Ice Age. The Lake District is a fish-spotter's paradise, reports John Lewis-Stempel
It's alive!
Living, burping and bubbling fermented masses of flour, yeast and water that spawn countless loaves—Emma Hughes charts the rise and rise) of sourdough starters
There's orange gold in them thar fields
A kitchen staple that is easily taken for granted, the carrot is actually an incredibly tricky customer to cultivate that could reduce a grown man to tears, says Sarah Todd
True blues
I HAVE been planting English bluebells. They grow in their millions in the beechwoods that surround us—but not in our own garden. They are, however, a protected species. The law is clear and uncompromising: ‘It is illegal to dig up bluebells or their bulbs from the wild, or to trade or sell wild bluebell bulbs and seeds.’ I have, therefore, had to buy them from a respectable bulb-merchant.
Oh so hip
Stay the hand that itches to deadhead spent roses and you can enjoy their glittering fruits instead, writes John Hoyland
A best kept secret
Oft-forgotten Rutland, England's smallest county, is a 'Notswold' haven deserving of more attention, finds Nicola Venning
