The Sleep in Beauty Garden at the RHS Malvern Spring Festival is Tythorne Garden Design's second show garden, and follows on from our debut at RHS Malvern in 2024. This is a garden for relaxation, featuring a king-sized bed which serves as a luxurious day bed or the perfect spot to spend the night outside in comfort.

 

Celebrating sustainable choices

The garden celebrates sustainable choices, with reclaimed, recycled and repurposed materials taking centre stage. The structure over the bed is made from end-of-life scaffolding boards, as is the majority of the boundary screen. Reclaimed industrial stillages have been repurposed as raised beds and to create a simple water feature. Strips of natural stone (cut from damaged and waste stone) provide a beautiful and functional path to link the various areas of the garden. The same stone has been used to create two decorative wall panels and a bespoke bench seat. Any remaining offcuts of the stone have been crushed to form an attractive (and permeable) gravel surface. Sustainability is also apparent with the recycled acrylic 'star gazing' panels above the bed, and the weather-resistant curtains hanging on three sides of the overhead structure which have been produced from recycled boat sails.

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Shade-tolerant planting

The Sleep in Beauty Garden has been designed so that the bed faces north east, and so our planting is all about shade. Often the 'unsung heroes' of our gardens, shade-tolerant plants deserve to be highlighted, and so we have purposely focused on showing a variety of plants that are happy in dappled or full shade. Shrubs including Mahonia 'Charity', Taxus baccata and Fatsia japonica provide height and structure, whilst perennials and ferns including Alchemilla mollis, Asarum europaeum and Polystichum setiferum offer texture and seasonal interest. The planting is intentionally green and calming, with just a few pops of seasonal colour from time to time. A provisional planting list is provided at the bottom of this page. Multiple tall trees, including Betula 'Fascination', Malus 'Mokum' and Prunus serrula provide height, structure and glorious dappled shade.

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A team effort

Every show garden takes months of preparation and dedication, but it also needs contributions from a large team of people and supporters. The Sleep in Beauty Garden is no exception. Firstly, we are indebted to the brilliant work of our landscaping contractor Pickwell Paving. Lee, Charlie and Josh have worked tirelessly to create this garden and we are extremely grateful to them.

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Thank you too to our wonderful suppliers: AllGreen for supplying the natural stone paving; Steintec for helping us with their low carbon permeable bedding mortar and jointing mortar; Landscapeplus for help with products for our lighting and our water feature; Wildflower Turf for the living roof above the bed; Hilliers Trees for help with the trees; and Sails & Canvas for making the bespoke weather-resistant curtains. 

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