BBC Gardeners World Spring Fair 2025

A Gold Award Winning Garden!

We're delighted to share that we were awarded Gold in the College Gardens category at the BBC Gardener's World Spring Fair.

Judges praised our garden for its strong concept, use of repurposed materials, and sensory appeal, describing it as a powerful blend of education and experience.

Congratulations to our Level 2 Professional Gardener Diploma students!

A gallery garden designed by students at Capel Manor College

Aspects of Nature is an innovative public installation: an outdoor gallery, where nature itself is on display; an inspiring open-air gallery enticing people to stop, admire and discover the art of nature and its ability to create beauty in contrasting conditions at different scales.

Gallery walls and viewing windows invite the visitor to experience the garden as art, creating a backdrop to the planting and providing frames for natural artworks.

The garden gallery showcases opposing aspects: North and South, shade and sun. A stumpery of decaying wood is home to the intricacies and textures of shade-loving moss, fungi and ferns. The sunny aspect, featuring drought-tolerant architectural planting, is complemented by a crevice garden and a striking granite obelisk.

Artistic landscaping features and styled elements reflect inspiration from natural materials and forms. A meandering path of natural materials leads the visitor on a journey between a shaded woodland and a sun-baked terrace.

Viewing frames and a staggered partition wall enable observation of the garden from different perspectives: from standing back and admiring a tree as you would a painting, to getting up close and studying the complex patterns of a sempervivum.

A garden of two contrasting worlds

The North Aspect

The North Aspect has a dark woodland theme, natural art framed within blackened wood walls showcase the beauty of natural textures: ferns, fungi and moss. A wandering path of natural materials invites the visitor to marvel at nature’s ability to create beauty in even the darkest, damp, shady corners.

Find out more about the plants featuring in the North Aspect

The South Aspect

The South Aspect provides a light-filled, sun-baked patio, showcasing architectural plants that thrive in bright, hot conditions. A selection of beautiful specimens pepper the garden’s crevices, providing a dramatic celebration of form, texture and colour.

Find out more about the plants featuring in the South Aspect

Framing Nature's Art

The gallery walls on both sides of the garden encase frames which mirror one another, inviting further appreciation of nature’s art.

Wooden frames on the shady side, display the beauty of natural materials collected and arranged to a draw our attention to the intricacy of the textured bark, moss, woodgrain, cones, and lush plants and ferns.

Meanwhile the lighter side’s textural, stone-coloured walls hold frames of reclaimed Corten steel, showcasing a variety of succulents, reclaimed gardening materials and a feature made of rammed earth: celebrating the beauty and many colours to be found in the soil – the very foundation of life!

Perspective

The garden’s side gallery walls contain viewing “windows” at different levels – inviting visitors of all heights to peer into often overlooked areas, where sometimes the most interesting things are happening. The visitors are directed to see the ‘art in nature’ by being prompted to look at specific highlights in the garden and experience the micro along with the macro.

Caradon Stone Obelisk

A key feature in the South Aspect garden is a beautiful Caradon granite obelisk - kindly provided by Caradon Stone, based in Liskeard, Cornwall. This type of granite was formed over 280 million years ago and has been used in building and landscaping since Neolithic times. It has also featured in many historic London landmarks including Nelson's Column, Kew Bridge and Victoria Railway Station.

As well as the link to London's historic past, this stone also represents Capel Manor College's commitment to sustainability as the granite has been sourced from using 100% renewable energy, with Caradon Stone implementing a state-of-the-art water system that recycles quarry water throughout the cutting process.

Find out more about Caradon Stone here.