2006 Garden Shows & Events

RHS Chelsea

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Earthworms key to Chelsea Flower Show Success

The humble earthworm is playing a vital role in a garden at this year's Chelsea Flower Show and helping designer and TV presenter Chris Beardshaw to launch a new educational initiative.

Chris has joined forces with The Wormcast Company to create The Chris Beardshaw Wormcast Garden - 'Growing for Life' at Boveridge House. This quintessentially English garden has been inspired by the Boveridge House garden in Dorset. Boveridge was designed in the 1920’s by the landscape architect Thomas Mawson and plants woman Gertrude Jekyll, who unwittingly worked together to create a truly unique and captivating garden.

Their garden is now home to a school for children with special needs and will be the focus of Chris' first Growing for Life initiative. The Chris Beardshaw Wormcast Garden will be planted using original planting plans drawn by Jekyll, including some of her personal summer favourites like spires of white Digitalis, Geranium himalayense and Rosa 'Paul’s Himalayan Dusk.'

It is the first time Chris and The Wormcast Company have worked together. "I have always believed that gardening is beautifully straightforward if gardeners collaborate with nature," says Chris. "and that is exactly the ethos of The Wormcast Company."

Stephen Muggleton, MD of The Wormcast Company, is excited at the opportunity to work with Chris and to bring the benefits of using Wormcast to the attention of gardeners everywhere. "At The Wormcast Company we keep billions of earthworms in gainful employment", he says. "Using their unique digestive process our worms munch their way through nutritious organic materials adding huge numbers of beneficial micro organisms to the product."

As Chris says, "For generations the best gardeners and growers have understood that the key to successful cultivation of beautiful and bountiful crops lies in the nurturing of the very soil in which plants grow and now Wormcast offers all gardeners the opportunity to unlock the fertility of their soils."

© Reckless Gardener Magazine 2005 Mill Cottage New Media