Leeds students explore the beauty and biodiversity of urban wasteland
Landscape architecture students from Leeds Becket University will showcase a naturalistic urban garden at June’s RHS Chatsworth Flower Show, exploring how urban wastelands become havens of biodiversity.
Titled ‘The path of least resistance’, the show garden will champion the ‘unsung heroes of the plant kingdom’ – the tough plants and wildflowers that exploit this particular post-industrial niche, bringing unexpected beauty and a rich wildlife habitat to otherwise maligned spaces.
The garden’s designers, Frankie Tomany, Zuza Golczyk, and Tom Rawlings, say that their aim is to ‘not only highlight the importance of natural spaces in our urban environments, but also to create a garden that encourages people to re-think traditional design and the use of conventional materials, raising awareness and inspiring positive change’.
The Chatsworth Flower Show takes place on 7–11 June at Chatsworth House, Derbyshire. Tickets are available from www.rhs.org.uk.
In order to pay for their installation and show expenses, the students have launched a crowdfunding page. Contribute to the exhibition here.
