Bringing Station South to the RHS Flower Show at Tatton Park

A Garden from Levenshulme

Station South is a community garden and cycle cafe on the old railway line in Levenshulme, the kind of place that has grown up slowly, path by path and bed by bed. When the chance came to build a garden at the RHS Flower Show at Tatton Park, the idea was simple. Take a bit of Station South with us.

I worked on it with the community gardener there. She led the planting and the growing. My side was the look of it, the signs and the colour, the parts that make Station South read as itself from across a show field.

The Sign and the Birds

The centre of it is a station totem, the green and cream railway sign that reads Station South, the same kind you would stand under waiting for a train. Three birds sit on top of it, cut from board and painted blue, yellow and pink.

The bed edges carry the same three colours in a painted stripe, lifted straight from the path back home. It is a small set of moves, a sign, some birds, three colours, but it is enough to tell you where the garden comes from.

Built on Site

Most of it went together in the days before the show opened, raised beds filled with a mix of flowers and food, strawberries and lettuce next to the ornamental planting. A community garden does not separate the two, and neither did this one.