M&G is delighted to announce that it has commissioned award-winning landscape and garden designer Andy Sturgeon to create a show garden for their third year at the Chelsea Flower Show.

Inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement, Andy will create a design for The M&G Garden that celebrates traditional craftsmanship and the beauty of natural materials and country garden planting.

With references to the gardens at Hidcote Manor and Sissinghurst, The M&G Garden will have a strong asymmetric quality, characteristic of the Arts and Crafts style; a series of formal, linear paths and terraces will combine with a mirrored water channel to create a succession of garden rooms delineated by three striking monolithic walls and a ‘floating’ oak bench, that are framed within a bold yew hedge.

Simple in form, without superfluous ornamentation, the garden will feature a palette of natural materials including aged copper, English oak and Purbeck stone, shown in their raw beauty with rustic textures revealed and construction techniques exposed and celebrated.

The dramatic focal point of the garden will be the ‘energy wave’ sculpture.  Crafted in copper rings, the sculpture will weave through the garden in a free and unconstrained way.  Spilling across borders and pathways and emerging in the rectangular pool, it will enliven the garden without challenging its formality or architectural framework.

The style of planting that Andy has created for The M&G Garden has a harmonious woodland-edge quality to it.  Domed umbellifers and clipped Ilex (Holly) will channel the eye through the garden, echoing the repetition of the patterns seen throughout the design, whilst clumps of billowing perennials in a palette of soft pink, white, lilac and yellow will gently soften the formal architectural edges of the garden. At opposite ends of the space, Cercidiphyllum trees (Candyfloss trees) will provide height and shade and anchor the garden to the site.

Win tickets to RHS Chelsea 2012 & a tour of 'The M&G Garden' by Andy Sturgeon