Occupation!, the Silver Merit border at the 2024 BBC Gardeners' World Autumn Fair at Audley End, with dark metal planters, a timber raised bed of squash in flower, a sawn log round and salvaged brick among grasses and late perennials

Gardeners’ World Show Garden

‘OCCUPATION!’ is my first show garden for the Gardener’s World Autumn Fair at Audley End.


Inspired by the magic of community groups reclaiming under used and overlooked places, the garden reimagines how occupation can spark transformation. It balances urban brownfield ecology with community-focused productive planting, showing how empowered people can create beauty and purpose in the most unexpected spaces.

Axonometric concept sketch of the Occupation! border, annotated to show existing brick paving peeled away to create the community garden, a raised planter built from that repurposed brick around existing boulders, and an upturned soapbox podium

Concept Sketches

Coloured concept plan of the Occupation! border, showing timber platforms, a brick path running the length of the plot, raised growing beds and salvaged brick rubble at the far end

Have a peek

The story benhind the design concept of my award winning show garden ‘OCCUPATION’.

  • Purple flowering perennials and silver foliage in the Occupation! border, with salvaged brick set into gravel between timber bed edges

  • Occupation!, the Silver Merit border at the 2024 BBC Gardeners' World Autumn Fair at Audley End, with dark metal planters, a timber raised bed of squash in flower, a sawn log round and salvaged brick among grasses and late perennials

  • Planting growing through salvaged brick and gravel against a raised timber bed in the Occupation! border

  • Pale pink snapdragons self seeding through a pile of salvaged brick rubble in the Occupation! border

  • A cardoon flower head opening above salvia and broad leaved planting in the Occupation! border, photographed against an open sky

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