Dorset designers to showcase at BBC Gardeners’ World Spring Fair

Garden designers from Dorset will present their ideas to thousands of visitors at the BBC Gardeners’ World Spring Fair at Beaulieu in the New Forest on 2–4 May.

Poole-based designer Matt Evans, from The Garden Room Living & Landscape Studio (in association with Elliots Builders Merchants), will showcase ‘The Beacon Garden’, a coastal-inspired design that is also a tribute to the Lighthouse, Poole’s Centre for the Arts, for all the work it does nurturing creative arts and culture in the region.

Meanwhile, students from Kingston Maurward College in Dorchester will enter the fair’s College Gardens competition. Four horticultural colleges have accepted this year’s challenge to create a budget-friendly show garden, based on the theme of ‘Nature’s Art within the Garden’. The college teams are mentored by award-winning garden designer, Cherry Carmen, whose accolades include a Gold Award at BBC Gardeners’ World Live.

Kingston Maurward College’s entry is called ‘Aperture’. It is designed to explore the boundaries between art and nature with a rich diversity of plants. A handcrafted sculpture allows visitors to capture, frame and experience nature’s art through a rotating aperture, like a photographer framing a shot. The students’ aim is to turn the garden, and the act of viewing it, into art.