A legacy for Chelsea Flower Show

‘Recycle and reuse’ is a familiar mantra in most homes and offices. We separate our refuse, support the local bottle bank and send our green waste to be composted.

Simple enough on a small scale and something that generates a feel-good glow. So imagine how good it felt to be able to remove more than 300 tons of material from the Chelsea Flower Show and put it to good use.

In the past, the glitz and glamour of show gardens hid an inconvenient truth – much of the plants, stone, timber and gravel used to create horticultural perfection were unceremoniously dumped after the event. Landfill’s gain was the environment’s loss.

That was never a sustainable option and the gardening world has taken action.

The Royal Horticultural Society, promoter of our leading flower shows, has a firm policy on encouraging exhibitors to reuse as much material as possible from all its shows.

Groundwork is a partner charity with the RHS at this year’s major flower shows, highlighting the work of both charities in getting local communities gardening and involving more people in transforming neighbourhoods.

Alongside this partnership, Groundwork London undertook the mammoth task this year of running the Chelsea Reuse Scheme. We delivered it through a 40-strong team of staff and volunteers led by Simon Bream and helped by a willing band from Balfour Beattie and Quadron Services, who held volunteer days to assist with the operation.

The fantastic outcome would not have been possible without support throughout from FM Conway. During and after the show, their lorries carried away hundreds of tons of donated stone, timber, gravel, compost, soil and aggregates as well as around 5,000 plants and trees

As well as individual items we also removed two complete show exhibits – from Architects Sans Frontieres and Knightsbridge School

All the material was taken to our depot in Canning Town, where it is being sifted, sorted and finally distributed to Transform projects across East London. This Groundwork-led scheme aims to create up to 100 community gardens from neglected sites throughout the Olympic Host Boroughs. It is funded by the City Bridge Trust, Defra, Sita Trust and Big Lottery Local Food.

A large proportion of the material is being used to build a complete garden on a site in Canning Town as part of an exciting project led by the Industri-us partnership that will create a temporary ‘up-cycling’ market and art project on the site. The garden will be constructed by a Groundwork London-led team of 18 unemployed young people being trained in horticulture. With support from Serco and The Landscape Group, the garden will be finished in time for the Olympics and seen by hundreds of thousands of people on their way to the competitions at the Excel centre.

It’s a pleasing thought that the plants and other material that started out as part of high-end exhibits at the world’s most famous flower show will find a new life helping with the greening of some of the neediest areas of a major city. People who didn’t have the opportunity to attend the Chelsea Flower Show can now share the fruit of the labours of leading growers and plant experts.

The project has proved that throwing away potentially valuable material is not only environmentally undesirable, it could mean you are missing a chance to improve things for others.