RNIB Unveils Chelsea Flower Show Garden

I’ve just received the press release below from Jess Sweetman at the RNIB.

RNIB’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show garden will be a voyage of discovery where visitors will feel compelled to take off their shoes, according to designer Paul Hervey-Brookes.

The RNIB Garden celebrates the redevelopment of one of the charity’s most cherished services, RNIB Pears Centre for Specialist Learning formerly know as Rushton School and Children’s Home. The Centre provides individualised care, education and therapies to children with complex needs and sight problems, who inspired the theme of the garden – the experience of the senses.  

RNIB aims to build awareness and understanding of what it’s like to live without sight by providing visitors, no matter what their range of vision, a deeper experience of texture and sound. Hervey-Brookes will focus on using materials that have textural qualities, left in as natural a state as possible. The garden will provide a space where raw natural components are fused with textural plants and contrasting colours to create a stimulating voyage of discovery where visitors feel compelled to take off their shoes and connect with their surroundings on a deeper level.

After the show, the garden will form a central part of the outdoor space at the RNIB Pears Centre and enjoyed by young people with complex needs and sight problems day after day.

Lesley-Anne Alexander, Chief Executive at the Royal National Institute of Blind People, said: “RNIB is really excited to be involved with RHS Chelsea Flower Show. All of the children at RNIB Pears Centre for Specialist Learning have been learning about the event and getting to know the flowers and plants that will be in the garden. They’re really looking forward to the garden being transferred to its permanent home.”

Garden Designer, Paul Hervey-Brookes, said: “Chelsea is possibly the most prestigeous and adrenaline fueled event in the gardening calendar. I feel that the RNIB Garden is not only something the children at the Centre will enjoy but also one that will help others to empathise with blind and partially sighted people. I am thrilled to be involved with RNIB and at Chelsea once again.”

This is the second time that Paul Hervey-Brookes has designed a garden for RHS Chelsea Flower Show. In 2010 Paul designed a garden exploring the theme of biodiversity from Bradstone and was awarded a Silver Medal.