Facebook inspired Garden

As a father-of-three, garden designer Joe Perkins is well aware that social media can lure young people away from the great outdoors.
By The Newsroom
Published 27th Apr 2019, 13:30 BST
Joe Perkins. Picture credit : Natalia Odescalchi/PA.Joe Perkins. Picture credit : Natalia Odescalchi/PA.
Joe Perkins. Picture credit : Natalia Odescalchi/PA.

Enter Beyond The Screen, Perkins’ Facebook-sponsored show garden at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show, within which he’s going to reveal how online and offline worlds can come together.

Visitors may think the Facebook garden, set in a 10x10m plot in the ‘Space to Grow’ category, is going to be high-tech, with state-of-the-art screens and speakers popping out from behind the flora and fauna. But Perkins’ vision is very different.

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It’s a coastal garden for young people, featuring plants from around the world that can withstand salt-laden winds and harsh weather. Euphorbias, agaves and maritime pines are among the plantings. I’ve got plants from Mexico, the Balearics, India and the US, but the point is, they all share this tolerance of particular conditions, so they have these shared interests - which brings me back to the community groups on social media.”

Other elements of the garden include water, a copper canopy and a dramatic rock formation.

“The coastal element for me is all about connection. The oceans connect us all geographically, water connects us physiologically and as a landscape, it’s evolving, just as online communities are constantly shifting and evolving,” he said.

There’s a copper canopy which references back to connectivity (copper is a conductor), the parallel being that social media is a conduit for global interaction.

The RHS Chelsea Flower Show runs from May 21-25. For details visit rhs.org.uk