RHS-BBC Morning Live Budget-friendly Feature Garden, RHS Hampton Court Garden Festival 2023

PRESS RELEASE

30 March 2023

Budget-friendly Garden at RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival 2023 [click here]

RHS-BBC Morning Live Budget-friendly Feature Garden designed by Mark Lane

With UK households looking for ways to save money, The RHS and BBC Morning Live are joining forces at this year’s RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival (4-9 July) with a garden full of creative, cost-effective tips and ideas to help keep the nation growing for their health and wellbeing this summer.

Designed by BBC Morning Live’s resident gardener Mark Lane, the ‘RHS-BBC Morning Live Budget-friendly Feature Garden’ will show ways to use household goods and equipment in the garden, and includes the use of cheap and readily-available drought-tolerant plants, as well as recycled materials such as scaffold boards, plant pots and pallets.

The fully accessible garden aims to inspire gardeners of all abilities. Full of fruit, vegetables and edible flowers, including some that can be grown from food waste, it will demonstrate that you don’t need a large space to feed the family with home grown produce.

Helena Pettit, RHS Director of Gardens & Shows said:

We’re delighted to be partnering with BBC Morning Live on this garden to help highlight ways people can garden on a budget.  Gardening doesn’t have to be expensive and there are lots of ways through plant propagation, reusing and recycling materials and water conservation that means everyone can continue to garden and grow whilst also saving money.

Here are five of Mark Lanes top money saving tips:

1. Save money and make plant labels and a compost scoop from a plastic milk bottle.
2. Rather than spending money on hormone rooting powder/gel, search your cupboards for honey and cinnamon.
3. Make a drip-irrigation device for houseplants from a recycled plastic bottle, a cotton bud, a bamboo cane and an elastic band.
4. Deter slugs by making your own organic spray from garlic.
5. Grow tomatoes, strawberries and lettuce from leftovers found in the bottom of your fridge.

The RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival runs from 4 – 9 July and tickets are available to buy online at www.rhs.org.uk/hamptoncourt.

– Ends –

Notes to Editors

For further information, interviews and images, please contact showspr@rhs.org.uk.

About the RHSSince our formation in 1804, the RHS has grown into the UK’s leading gardening charity, touching the lives of millions of people. Perhaps the secret to our longevity is that we’ve never stood still. In the last decade alone we’ve taken on the largest hands-on project the RHS has ever tackled by opening the new RHS Garden Bridgewater in Salford, Greater Manchester, and invested in the science that underpins all our work by building RHS Hilltop – The Home of Gardening Science.

We have committed to being net positive for nature and people by 2030. We are also committed to being truly inclusive and to reflect all the communities of the UK.

Across our five RHS gardens we welcome more than three million visitors each year to enjoy over 34,000 different cultivated plants. Events such as the world famous RHS Chelsea Flower Show, other national shows, our schools and community work, and partnerships such as Britain in Bloom, all spread the shared joy of gardening to wide-reaching audiences.

Throughout it all we’ve held true to our charitable core – to encourage and improve the science, art and practice of horticulture –to share the love of gardening and the positive benefits it brings.
For more information visit www.rhs.org.uk.

About Mark Lane

Mark Lane Designs Ltd is a multi-award-winning garden design practice now based in Lincolnshire. With an emphasis on accessible, sustainable and sensory gardens rich in biodiversity, the practice receives commissions from private clients, charities, hospitals, rehabilitation centres and development companies.

With a background in art and architecture, Mark brings a unique perspective when it comes to designing bespoke gardens for clients, whether residential, public or institutional.

When designing the RHS-BBC Morning Live Budget-friendly Feature Garden Mark wanted to intentionally leave it to look like it’s a DIY project –

something that anyone can achieve at home

Bringing Mark’s skills of searching through recycling bins, hunting down ‘grey timber’ which would otherwise end up being burnt or sent to landfill, scouring kitchen cupboards and the bottom of the fridge, upcycling pieces of furniture and introducing 22 gardening tips that have appeared on BBC Morning Live over the last few years, this garden will hopefully resonate with a lot of the visitors and viewers.

Mark continues:

The British Isles were once covered in dense forest, but a growing population and a fuel-hungry economy depleted the forests until by 1900 only 5% of British soil was woodland, compared to the European average of 44%. Thanks to forestry efforts coverage has doubled since then, but still falls far short of the government target of 17-19% by 2050. Despite this lack of trees, the UK demand for wood is stronger than ever, and in 2020 we imported about 48 million cubic metres of wood products (80% of our total consumption), making us one of the biggest importers of wood in the world. About 22% of this was timber and panels for use in the construction industry. Not only does transporting this much wood around the world create substantial emissions, but imported wood is more likely to be a product of deforestation. It’s estimated that around a million cubic metres of illegal timber enter the UK each year. Wood recycling has also undergone a massive boom in the UK, from less than 2% of wood waste in 1990 to more than 80% in 2020, thanks to growth in our biomass and composite panel industries.

In 2020 the UK generated around 4.5 million tonnes of waste wood. This wood comes from a number of different sectors, including construction, demolition, manufacturing and wood processing. In addition, households produce huge quantities of waste wood that end up at local Council-run recycling centres and of course, waste pallets by the million and a large quantity of wooden packaging waste are produced right across every sector of the economy. Until quite recently, most of this ended up in landfill – a shameful way of dealing with a potentially valuable resource, where it just rots and releases methane and other gasses that contribute to climate change. Thankfully over the last few years things have changed and in 2020 around 4 million tonnes of waste wood was recycled. The majority (around 65%) of wood that is diverted by what we call the high-volume wood recycling industry is not reused, but chipped and burnt in power stations to produce low-carbon electricity. A lot of it (around 26%) is used in the manufacture of composite sheet materials such as MDF, chipboard and OSB. Most of the remainder (9%) is used for animal bedding or for landscape surfaces.

In addition,

Britons send over 50% of reusable furniture to landfill every year. 22 million pieces of furniture are discarded each year in the UK, and the majority of this furniture is sent directly to landfill. Less than 1 in 10 people consider repairing their furnishings to extend their life span. 1.6 million tonnes of bulky waste – 42% of which is furniture and 19% textiles, equating to a total of 670,000 tonnes of furniture and 310,000 tonnes of textiles waste is disposed by householders in the UK annually and sent to landfill. 110,000 tonnes of furniture at Household Waste and Recycling Centres is re-usable in its current condition. 32% per cent of bulky waste is re-usable in its current state, and this figure rises to 51% if we take into account items requiring slight repair. 30% of adults throw away household items that could have been donated, sold or reused and a fifth of 16-24-year-olds don’t actually know how to recycle or donate, according to new research from The British Heart Foundation.

Notes to Editors

For further information, please contact the RHS or Mark Lane directly on either 07808 767 334 or 07801 357 819 www.marklanedesigns.com