The Green&Black's Rainforest Garden
Designed by Jane Owen and Ann-Marie Powell
This garden is a platform for the indigenous people of the Cameroon rainforest to highlight the pressures they and the forest face from illegal logging and mining. The Baka and Bagyeli people have only recently started to cultivate plants for food to supplement their diets as the indigenous forest, previously a source of all their needs, is being destroyed.
The Chelsea plot is designed to represent a clearing in the rainforest, there is leaf litter and the evidence of forest clearance symbolically left in place around the cultivated area. Planted with banana, cassava and maize, the plot is surrounded by the encroaching wild growth of the rainforest canopy.
A traditional Mongulu leaf house forms the centrepiece to the garden, designers Jane and Ann-Marie have been working with a group of African indigenous women to create this unique structure. The back and sides of the plot include plants representing the rainforest, for example the fiddle leaved fig, Ficus lyrata a native fig tree of the region. Cultivated banana palms line the front of the plot, their leaves framing the garden to create the illusion of peering through the edge of the forest into the garden.
This garden has been awarded a Gold medal by the RHS.
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