Local Garden designer, Lorna Batchelor and Stone Mason/ sculptor, Johnny Clasper have collaborated on a garden design to win a Gold Award at the Spring Flower Show in Harrogate – 27 April 2018.
The garden is titled Eden and following display at the show it will move to a permanent home at the Henshaws Art and Craft Centre in Knaresborough.
Johnny Clasper is no stranger success at the show, with this becoming his 5th Gold and having worked with stone since he was 16-years-old.Local
Johnny Clasper said:
You could probably best describe the design as a vertical wall that flips to form 4 waterways, surrounded with marginal plants.
It has taken 5 days and 15 tonnes of stone to put together. We are grateful that the stone has been donated by the CED Stone Group. It’s a mixture of Atlantic cobbles and Turkish paddles stones. The paddle stones are smooth has they are tumbled in a river bed.
The stone work was installed initially followed by the planting by Lorna Batchelor.
Lorna is based in Green Hammerton and has worked in garden design for 12-years. Having a disabled son, she has needed to balance her time and it has seen gradual move into the garden design work, sometimes drawing inspiration from her son – a design in Spring 2016 was sensory garden.
Lorna said:
Putting a show garden together can give you much more opportunity to have free-reign over the design than maybe with a normal garden project. Normally you need to sit and really listen to what a client wants, but shows are really different as you can more do as you wish.
Johnny added:
Working with stone is about getting a feel for the stone and how it can fit together. It’s not formulaic, it’s a touch and feel thing.
The shows are great as they allow you to go up against the best and to show the public what you can do.
We are really proud to have been given a Gold Award for the garden.
Lorna added:
Once the show is over we will moving the garden to its permanent home in Knaresborough, in woodland walk at the rear of Henshaws Arts and Crafts Centre.
The Spring Flower Show runs from 26 to 29 April 2018.
