RHS Urban Show: Growing in the City
What is urban gardening? This question will be raised at the first RHS Urban Show, to be held from 18 to 21 April at the Depot Mayfield in Manchester.
The Royal Horticultural Society first large scale indoor show explores the cutting-edge of modern gardening, from a seven-garden vision for a greener city to vertical structures for awkward urban spaces, the secret to growing happy houseplants and a horticultural exhibit celebrating the heyday of the Manchester scene’s Hacienda days.
Major exhibits include:
- RHS City Spaces: Cloudscape by Manchester Cloud Gardener Jason Williams, who challenges horticultural retailers, local authorities and developers to rethink the ways in which they interact with communities with a vision of how to make our towns and cities greener.
Designed through a collaborative process involving students on Manchester Metropolitan University’s Rise programme and Notcutts Garden Centre. - Four-time RHS Chelsea Flower Show medal-winners GrowTropicals reveal the secret to which houseplants are best suited to your home’s unique environment.
- Midlands-based designer Amanda Grimes brings her exhibit, Pop Culture Planting: Punk Rockery, the New Wave and 24-Hour Party Planting, a two-part installation set over three years showing a design at the time of planting, one year on and two years on.
The RHS Urban Show, sponsored by Mad About Land, also debuts “content cubes” for gardeners with small spaces, including Conal McGuire’s Urban Shade which utilises modular ‘grow frames’ offering a creative, versatile and eco-friendly solution for growing in awkward urban spaces which can be reconfigured in different ways.
There’s a programme of talks and a host of shopping opportunities, from a variety of indoor and outdoor plants suitable for urban growers to a new clothing range by MAD, as well as pots and macramé.
RHS-run workshops include how to make your own terrariums.
Lex Falleyn, show manager for the RHS Urban Show, said: “Urban Gardening is diverse and dynamic and the inaugural RHS Urban Show is an exciting opportunity to explore the important role gardening plays in greening up cities.
Tickets can be purchased at: https://www.rhs.org.uk/shows-events/rhs-urban-show.