Winning designs picked for Westonbirt Festival

Ten garden designs have been chosen from more than 200 entries for this year’s Westonbirt Festival of the Garden, to be held at the National Arboretum in Gloucestershire.

The Westonbirt Festival, which takes place from June to September, bills itself as a ‘design-led event’ and champions contemporary garden design. Gardens are limited to an area of between 150m2 and 200m2 and a materials budget of £15 000.

Organiser TJM Associates ‘encourages cross discipline responses’, says director Therese Lang and submissions were received from designers across a scope of disciplines, including architecture, photography, sculpture and fine art.

Winning gardens were chosen for their ‘design-led approach, originality, the imaginative use of materials and their wit and inspirational nature’, she adds.

Several incorporate unconventional materials, such as performing arts director Ali Homan Mar’s entry, which uses artificial and spray-painted tulips and roses, sounds, textures and the spoken word to consider the boundaries between nature and culture.

BN1 Environmental Design’s entry demonstrates how sustainable technology, ecology and environment can be applied to a garden and German landscape architects Die Landschafts Architekten examine the nature of the botanical name of the daisy, which means beauty and endurance, using daisies and architectural elements.

Other finalists include landscape architects Lesley Kennedy, Brodie McAllister, Jessica Read and Frauke Materlik, Canadian Studio Espace Drar, American Mira Engler, artist Clive Warwick and BBC presenter and gardener James Alexander-Sinclair.

A number of public art works have also been commissioned for the Arboretum. Curated by SWPA, the work will be site-specific, with artists selected on the strength of their previous work.