At 27, Chelsea first-timer Hugo Bugg is one of the younger garden designers to design a show garden. Since being named RHS Young Designer of the Year in 2010, and armed with a clutch of Gold Medals from other RHS shows, he has been commissioned for exciting projects including the first Royal Botanic Garden in Jordan. RHS Online spoke to him about his RBC Waterscape garden and found that although his career is rocketing, his feet are still planted on terra firma…
The garden you are creating for the Royal Bank of Canada has an important message. Tell me about what you’re hoping visitors will take home from it.
It’s all about taking responsibility for water usage – especially in urban environments – and slowing it down using various features to help prevent flash flooding and overburdening drainage systems. The garden probably doesn’t, on first sight, look like most people’s perception of an environmentally-friendly or sustainable garden because it’s very contemporary with lots of angular lines and modern materials. But by imitating the cycle of water in the wild, and showing how it can be encouraged to permeate the ground gradually, we will hopefully inspire visitors to reproduce some of the ideas in their own gardens.
There’s quite a lot of water flowing through your garden – has this affected your choice of plants?
Yes, I’ve included plants that can accommodate different levels of saturation, from total water-logging right through to those that prefer drier conditions in the parts of the garden that represent parched land. Iris x robusta ‘Gerald Darby’, Juncus effusus and Darmera peltata are water-loving plants, while others in the woodland such as Libertia grandiflora, Geranium sylvaticum and Euphorbia wallichii like drier feet.
You seem very cool about the prospect of your first Chelsea appearance – are you paddling underneath like a swan?
Not at all, I know Chelsea is a bigger show and attracts the big names, and that’s really exciting. But any pressure is self-inflicted and I’ve set myself a really high standard to achieve. I know in my mind what I want the garden to look like and as long as it can be built to that quality, then I have no worries. I feel I’m competing with myself rather than the other world-class designers at the show.
Do you think all the flooding issues we’ve had in the UK last winter will make people take more notice of water conservation and control issues?
We can’t stop the rain, but hopefully it will draw people’s attention to what can be done to harness it, put it to good use and encourage natural filtration throughout a garden.
