Fowey-based Darren Hawkes awarded Chelsea Gold for Lady Garden Foundation

What if a garden could save your life? That’s the ambition behind a Gold medal-winning Show Garden unveiled this morning at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, designed by Fowey-based Darren Hawkes for the Lady Garden Foundation.

The ‘Silent No More’ Garden, sitting on the prestigious Main Avenue, is believed to be the first garden in Chelsea’s history designed for a gynaecological cancer charity. Its job is to get people talking about the five gynaecological cancers, conversations the charity says are too often shut down by stigma and silence.

A two-year journey

Darren spent two years working with the Lady Garden Foundation on the design, speaking to patients and their families about how these cancers had affected their lives.

“I’m honoured to be awarded a Gold medal for the Lady Garden Foundation ‘Silent No More’ Garden at the world’s most prestigious flower show,” he said. “The design has been a two-year journey with the Lady Garden Foundation as I’ve immersed myself in the charity’s bold and unflinching campaign work and spoken to patients and their families about the devastating effect gynaecological cancer has had on their lives. Throughout that time, I’ve explored the taboos and silences that so often surround these cancers, in order to create an impactful, thought-provoking garden. Through its hard landscaping, planting, and sculptural elements, the garden is designed to ignite life-saving conversations about the five gynaecological cancers.”

📷Darren Hawkes with Lady Garden Foundation project Director Natasha Douglas

Inspired by a Spanish sculptor

The centrepiece draws on Spanish artist Eduardo Chillida’s clay sculpture La Casa del Poeta III, with its enclosing, interconnecting forms. Darren designed four architectural structures, built by Lady Garden Foundation supporter Ruddy Joinery, which sit together to form a cocoon-like space. The overhanging tops create a womb-like environment offering shelter and privacy, designed to draw visitors in and encourage them to talk.

Around the structures, a Mediterranean-inspired planting scheme of soft pinks, silver greys and glaucous foliage softens the space.

Five sculptures by artists Hannah Hartwell and Antony Bryant line the stone-limed path as ‘conversation starters’, leading visitors into a sunken central area where water spills from a pool into deep rills extending to the garden boundaries.

📷Darren Hawkes Lady Garden Foundation RHS Chelsea Flower Show

More than a Show Garden

Jenny Halpern Prince MBE, Co-Founder and CEO of the Lady Garden Foundation, said the garden was designed to do real work.

“We are thrilled that the Lady Garden Foundation ‘Silent No More’ Garden has been awarded a Gold medal by the RHS,” she said. “Designed by Darren Hawkes, our garden has been created to be more than just a Show Garden, its a public health intervention that will provide visitors with an outdoor space where they can access the language to have a vital conversation about symptoms, diagnosis and preventative action for gynaecological cancers. We hope that the powerful platform of RHS Chelsea will allow our charity team, our volunteers and a celebrity ambassador hosts to speak to visitors at the show, as well as those viewing the garden at home on television, to help us shift the dial on women’s gynaecological cancer awareness, and ultimately improve survival rates across the UK.”

The garden opens to RHS members today and tomorrow, and to the public for the rest of the week until Saturday 23rd May.