St Mungo's Chelsea Garden to find new home in London Bridge
The award-winning St Mungo’s Putting Down Roots Garden has been hugely popular with visitors and celebrities at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show this year and we’re excited to announce it will be finding a permanent home in the London Bridge area in the very near future.
Our long standing partners at St Mungo’s were given the opportunity to create one of the Show Gardens at the world-famous event and chose to work with landscape designer Darryl Moore of Cityscapes, another friend of Team London Bridge, to create one of the largest on-site this year.
St Mungo’s, which operates services supporting people to recover from homelessness across London and the South of England, is being backed by Project Giving Back which is generously funding the garden.
The Garden
The St Mungo’s Putting Down Roots Garden was awarded a Silver Medal at this year’s show. It embodies the partnership between the two organisations as they work together to help people recovering from homelessness develop their confidence, learn new skills and rebuild their lives.
The garden is an ‘urban pocket park’, highlighting how people and plants can be brought together in a city environment, and the ways in which green spaces provide personal and social, health and wellbeing benefits.
The design focuses on green textural foliage punctuated with floral accents of colour, giving the garden a gentle sense of tranquillity, contrasting with the vibrant colours in the pavilion and other features, which are all made from recycled materials. The seating encourages socialising and is all on one level to aid accessibility.
Coming to London Bridge
Sustainability is at the heart of the design and Team London Bridge is proud to be part of the project to re-locate the garden in London Bridge. It will be fully recycled and arranged over two prominent sites: one in London Bridge City beside the Queen’s Walk; the other in Guy’s Campus to bring greenery and respite outside the hospital entrance. London Bridge City and King’s College London, alongside Team London Bridge, will maintain the new gardens so that they can be enjoyed by Putting Down Roots clients, local residents, workers and visitors for years to come.
Rose Alexander, Head of People and Culture at London Bridge City, said, ‘London Bridge City are delighted to welcome St Mungos and Cityscapes' garden from the Chelsea Flower Show with a permanent home at our iconic site. We are proud to welcome a large variety of people including those who live nearby or work here. You are all warmly invited and hope you will join us soon in this special dwelling garden with unrivalled backdrop of the Thames, City skyline and Tower of London.’
Kat Thorne, Director of Sustainability at King’s said, ‘The Putting Down Roots garden is a fantastic example of how King’s can work with local partners to improve biodiversity and green space. It also strongly links to our sustainability commitments, as well as King’s work with local communities. I look forward to seeing the King’s community and our local community enjoy this space and learn about the work of St Mungo’s.’
Matt Woodruff, Horticulture Skills Manager at St Mungo', said, ‘Being at RHS Chelsea Flower Show was such a great sense of pride for St Mungo's and our clients. It was always important for our Putting Down Roots Garden to be reused, and with the help of Team London Bridge we’ve found two great locations where it's lasting benefits will continue to be enjoyed. The new Guy’s Hospital and London Bridge City gardens will allow Cityscapes' bold design to draw the public in and offer a space for our clients to keep developing the skills that are central to their recovery.’
St Mungo’s has been running Putting Down Roots for 21 years and the programme has allowed its clients to look after a number of our London Bridge gardens since 2009.
The innovative, award winning programme is entirely voluntarily funded, and provides vocational horticultural training to support people as they recover from homelessness and develop vital skills for employment.
Find out more about St Mungos: www.mungos.org