It’s been an incredibly busy few weeks for the Frogheath team as we’ve been at the Chelsea Flower Show building the YoungMinds garden designed by Charlie Chase of Chase Gardens.

Charlie has already designed more than 80 gardens with features in Gardens Illustrated and Architectural Digest. He’s also contributed to many award winning RHS show gardens but this was his debut as a designer with a show garden of his own. 

This garden was sponsored by Project Giving Back and in support of the charity YoungMinds whose mission is for young people to know that whatever they are going through, they matter and they deserve help.

The hard work for a show garden begins months before the show itself with Charlie making regular visits to Frogheath to work on his design with the team and undertaking a full pre-build here with us to ensure everything would be just right prior to the build on site. Having built many award winning show gardens over the years Steve and the team at Frogheath were able to offer lots of advice and guidance during this time to make sure the build on site went as smoothly as possible.

The build began 10 days before the show opened and it was all hands-on deck to firstly prepare the site and focus on structural work to make sure everything was safe and well supported before more elements were added. Next the boulders and trees were carefully lifted into place and then it was time to plant.

Steve and the team worked tirelessly to bring Charlie’s vision to life and we’re pleased to report the garden was awarded a Silver Gilt medal. Charlie said ‘Steve Moody is an incredible man, just the most calm mind, really good energy and great knowledge as well.’

The garden was part of the All About Plants category and Charlie is known for his use of rarer plants to transform outdoor spaces. It was a deliberate choice to use a wide variety of plants and trees within the garden to represent the variety of mental health challenges young people face. Huge cracked Kentish ragstone boulders were used amongst the plants to represent trauma and hardships that young people face with the plants surrounding them still able to flourish with the right support and care. Accents of yellow were also deliberately used as a nod to the YoungMinds logo and branding.

Steve said ‘The whole garden is just unique, it’s different from anything we have done before. It’s a lovely story and we are all really pleased with it’

We’re incredibly proud of the efforts of our entire team, who all contributed in their own way, and send Charlie a huge congratulations from us all for his Silver Gilt medal.