Multi award-winning Chelsea Flower Show designer to exhibit at Ellerslie
Multi award-winning Chelsea Flower Show garden designer Chris Beardshaw will design the 2010 international feature garden at the next year’s Ellerslie International Flower Show.
Renowned for his formal English garden designs, Chris Beardshaw has won nine Gold and Silver Gilt Royal Horticultural Society medals, five Best in Show Awards and the People’s Choice Award at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show two years running.
Ellerslie International Flower Show Exhibition Manager Kate Hillier says any garden by Chris Beardshaw is guaranteed to be a real showstopper.
“Visitors to next year’s Ellerslie International Flower Show will be in for a real treat. Chris is an outstanding designer who has wowed the industry for many years with his designs. He continues to display innovation and passion for garden design, having a real talent for creating gardens which inspire and are tailored to the individual.
“His exhibition gardens are always a winner and his name attracts the crowds to Chelsea and the other Royal Horticultural Society shows throughout England.”
His latest success was winning Gold and being named Best in Show Award for the second consecutive year at this year’s RHS Tatton Park Show in Cheshire.
Ms Hillier says Ellerslie is privileged to have attracted a garden designer of such an international standing as Chris Beardshaw.
Chris Beardshaw runs his own design and consultancy practice in the United Kingdom, however, he works internationally designing everything from small private gardens to public spaces.
He is the principal designer for a major landscape development in Bahrain and created a show garden at this year’s World Garden Competition in Japan, winning only one of four awards for Best Planting Design and Horticultural Skills. Chris has also just completed a Peace Garden in Lewisham honouring Nobel Prize winner Bishop Desmond Tutu.
Chris says he is excited about creating the international feature garden at next year’s Ellerslie International Flower Show and visiting New Zealand.
“It’s an honour to have been invited to exhibit at the Ellerslie International Flower Show and to be exhibiting in Christchurch which is internationally renowned as New Zealand’s Garden City.
“Christchurch, I am told, is more English than England, so I am so looking forward to visiting next week and coming back in March to be involved in Ellerslie 2010. It will be such an amazing challenge.”
He says is aware of the reputation and diversity of exhibition gardens at previous Ellerslie shows and looks forward to being involved in a flower show which has established a strong international following and looks set to take its place as one of the top flower shows in the world.
Chris’s 2010 Ellerslie show garden is based on his expertise in creating traditional English gardens, and in particular draws on his love and passion for the arts and crafts period which saw the rise of some of the greatest contributors to the gardening world such as plantswoman Gertrude Jekyll and landscape architect Thomas Mawson.
His garden will be sponsored by leading New Zealand perennial nursery, Trents Nursery, and include a number of new release plants.
