Check Out This Season’s Hottest Garden Trends at Urban Gardens 2005
Urban Gardens 2005 (6 – 8 May, Olympia, London) is the perfect opportunity to see the season’s latest gardening ranges and innovative new products. From designer planters and funky pet houses to state-of-the-art water features and cutting edge tree houses, Urban Gardens offers visitors a chance to buy original products and plants simply not found in traditional garden centres.
If you’ve ever dreamt of hosting a dinner party on the veranda of your very own Serengeti Lodge or your children would love an adventure play house in their own backyard, look no further than Treehouse Life. Creating unique tree houses to suit gardens of any shape or size, Treehouse Life specialises in tree houses for those without trees! Treehouse Life will be creating a striking display for Urban Gardens 2005, showing how its tree houses create the perfect retreat after a long hard day in the office.
Urban Gardens 2005 sees the launch of Omlet’s eglu® pet, an exciting addition to the phenomenally successful eglu® chicken house. The eglu® pet is modern, stylish and frees animals from uninspiring, cramped and difficult to clean traditional pet houses. Omlet’s designers worked with leading animal behaviourists to create this innovative home, which is suitable for a wide variety of animals such as rabbits, guinea pigs and even tortoises.
Whether you are looking for designer outdoor furniture and lighting, funky picnic accessories or even a luminous outdoor chess board, furniture retailer DesignShop UK has plenty of unusual products guaranteed to give your garden a fresh new look. Selling many of the biggest names in designer furniture such as Kartell, Vitra and Magis, DesignShop UK takes a bright, colourful and contemporary look on outdoor living.
David Harbour Sundials will be displaying its exclusive range of sleek water features and sundials at this year’s show, creating a magnificent 2m tall water feature, the Ether Tower, for one of Urban Garden’s main show gardens from shiny stainless steel discs.
If you are looking to add some functional sculpture into your garden, design talent Alex Relph specialises in bespoke metal furniture and architectural features for the outdoors. His artistic wire effect seating, curved benches and striking obelisks will add a contemporary twist to even the most traditional of gardens.
This is just a small taste of what to expect at Urban Gardens 2005. With leading garden designers, stunning show gardens, presentations in the BBC London Celebrity Theatre and one-to-one consultations in the Livingetc Design Clinic, visitors are guaranteed to discover inspirational ideas and solutions for their outdoor spaces.
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INDULGENCE BY DIARMUID GAVIN is one of the fourteen show gardens featured at the urban gardens show.
The aim with Diarmuids garden is to create the ultimate fab pad outdoors as a reward for the long hard days spent slaving over computer screens in the city.
A garden that needs little maintenance but looks lush and tropical, has all the accessories for any man or woman about town, including cedar hot tub, outdoor sauna and state of the art deck, music and lighting. Indulgence with a capital I, Relaxation with a capital R, the aspirational garden for the person who has little time but wants to use it well.
WITH THANKS TO HIS SPONSOR
RED LETTER DAYS
www.redletterdays.co.uk
For more information about Urban Gardens 2005 at the Grand Hall, Kensington Olympia visit www.urban-gardens.com or call 0870 1260219.
Getting to the show;
Underground – District Line from Earl’s Court to Kensington Olympia
Rail – Kensington Olympia mainline station
Bus – Hammersmith Rd 9, 10, 27, 28, Holland Rd 49, North End Rd 391
Parking – To pre-book parking please call 0871 871 9809 or visit www.eco.co.uk
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Naturally, Diamuid is urban roof gardens favourite celebrity garden designer, look on page 10 of our news section 23/05/04 – Reclaiming London’s rooftops and play the video
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Below are pictures of Diarmuid Gavin Design’s
The National Lottery Garden – A Colourful Suburban Eden at last years RHS Chelsea Gardens Show
Designer: Diarmuid Gavin
Sponsor: Camelot Group plc
Contractor: Sean Cunningham
This vibrant, light-hearted garden is made up of a series of curved features. The planting, predominantly many different shades of green, is inspired by the ‘Emerald Isle’ where Diarmuid grew up. The green is punctuated with drifts of colour, which are echoed by a series of multi-coloured metal spheres. Other influences include the Festival of Britain, Damien Hirst spot paintings, the modernist movement and the Teletubbies.
The multi-coloured metal spheres form a curved pergola overhead, following the pathway that meanders through the garden. The idea is repeated with an elevated wave of similar spheres supported on vertical steel posts toward the back of the garden. The curved forms are continued in an oval, contoured lawn, circular paved areas and a capsule-shaped pond wrapped by an elongated patio. A hi-tech, oval pavilion, also covered in small, bright metal spheres provides the backdrop to the garden. This structure functions as a summerhouse, and can double up as a conservatory.
The emphasis in the planting is green, in hundreds of shades, using the effects of foliage over flowers. Structural plants such as Betula pendula (silver birch), Rhus typhina (stag’s horn sumach) and Gleditsia give backbone to the planting. Architectural foliage is supplied by Dicksonia antarctica (tree fern), Blechnum chilense (Chilean hard fern), Matteuccia struthiopteris (shuttlecock fern) and Fatsia japonica. Splashes of purple and bronze from the alliums, eremurus, verbascum, irises and heuchera pick up the colours of the spheres.