Latest News from Garden Design School
Here at Garden Design School we build a nurturing and supportive environment – which doesn’t stop even after you’ve graduated! We love to hear how our graduates businesses are thriving or how they are winning awards or exciting new contracts. So we created a regular newsletter; Friends of Garden Design School, designed to help keep us all in touch and share our news.
To view previous editions, click here.
To sign up to become a Friend of Garden Design School click here.
Graduate success at The Boston Flower Show
New England’s most prestigious gardening show – The Boston Flower Show has been running for over 100 years and attracts tens of thousands of visitors. Garden Design School secured an opportunity for a group of American graduates from the class of 2011 to exhibit, and to everyone’s delight they scooped a ground-breaking 5 awards – something of a record for over 30 years.
The show was held at the Seaport Trade Center in Boston, Massachusetts on March 14-18th and given the theme ‘First Impressions’. The show team’s garden entitled “Yankee ingenuity and southern charm” did not only beautifully meet the brief to deliver an impactful first impression, but it is fair to say, also left a very powerful lasting impression.
Moira Farnham and Robin Templar Williams comment "This year's success is remarkable and something that we are really proud of. The flower show team worked tirelessly to produce their show garden and something of this standard and level of creativity rightly deserve the recognition received... What a start to five very promising careers!"
The 5 graduates from Florida, Vermont and Massachusetts collaborated for months to develop their plans and ultimately bring them to life. They were supported by Lauren Miklavic who herself graduated in 2010 and was one of the first Garden Design School team who exhibited in last year’s event.
This year’s team saw The Boston Flower Show as an opportunity to tap into the industry, begin to network, and to finally put into practice all they had learnt from Rob and Moira in the classroom. Coming from a wide variety of backgrounds – from construction to garden retail – they recognised their unique blend of talents may be just what was needed to deliver an outstanding entry.
Kathy Schofield explains “Team meetings began in July shortly after graduation, and it was clear that we needed to develop a solid plan and hit the ground running. Several proposals and many drafts later the final design was in place along with a plan to reach our financial target”.
As the months progressed the team found nurseries willing to donate or loan plant material including 200 hellebores, 75 ferns and 40 irises. The next hurdle was to acquire construction materials – some of which were donated, many they hope to reuse in future projects.
The team’s Yankee ingenuity transformed salvaged display walls found at a dump, into the industrial backdrop of the rooftop garden display. In addition a door, windows, light fixtures, and industrial tubs (also salvaged) were transformed to bring the lush urban chic garden to life.
Please join us in congratulating Larry MacDonnell, Nancy Mellen, Jamie Ross, Betsy Gritman and Kathy Schofield and wishing them all the best in their future garden design careers.