Hertfordshire company honoured by Silver-Gilt Medal...

(25th May 2011)

Hertfordshire-based landscape contractors Bowles & Wyer Contracts were honoured at the world famous Chelsea Flower Show yesterday as Judges awarded the Show Garden built by the company a prestigious Silver-Gilt medal.

The event, considered to be the world’s most famous flower show, regularly attracts 160,000 visitors and counts royalty, politicians and celebrities from the arts and show business among its guests. It is universally recognised as the place where gardening trends are created and highest standards of garden design, planting and construction are exhibited.

The Homebase Cornish Memories Garden was built by Bowles & Wyer Contracts at the Chelsea Flower Show for landscape and garden designer Tom Hoblyn. It was one of the 17 major Show Gardens at this year’s Show of which five gardens received a coveted Silver-Gilt medal.

The medal is a huge achievement for Bowles & Wyer Contacts as it was the first time the company had been involved in the leading horticultural event.

Designer Tom Hoblyn who commissioned the company to build the medal-winning Show Garden said: “Bowles & Wyer Contracts came highly recommended by several long-standing Chelsea contemporaries and they certainly lived up to their reputation. The build process went really smoothly and the final result – as our Silver-Gilt medal demonstrates - was excellent. It is all thanks to the thorough organisation and the vast experience that Bowles & Wyer Contracts bought to the job.

The company, who are based near Tring in Hertfordshire, are no stranger to awards having been recognised for their superior craftsmanship and attention to detail on many residential and commercial projects over the years.

The garden, which incorporated an ambitious granite-edged natural swimming pool and a striking glass-topped circular pavilion with accompanying ’shadow’ pool, was a complex build that required meticulous precision and attention to detail.

Bowles & Wyer Contracts worked with Hoblyn and a team of specialists to create the garden including a water expert to design the complicated water rill system that links the two pools through the centre of the garden and the an architect to help design the striking timber, steel and glass-topped pavilion that rests at the end of the garden.

Company Director, Dan Riddleston, who led the project and had extensive experience of building medal-winning Chelsea gardens before he joined the company in 2006, believes it was the coordination and handling of the build logistics that helped achieved the medal.

Riddleston said: “it was great to be back at RHS Chelsea and we are thrilled that garden achieved a Silver-Gilt medal. We take great pleasure in working with and realising the ideas of talented garden designers and it is a testimony to the hard work of our staff and suppliers that we have been acknowledged for this."

Bowles & Wyer Contracts have been working in Herts for over 15 years. They have built many successful residential projects in region, most recently, a residential garden near Little Missenden and a large country garden in Bledlow Ridge.

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