Hartley Botanic and New Zealand winery Cloudy Bay are among the first of 2016 to release details of their display gardens for this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show.
After almost 60 years of exhibiting beautifully planted trade stands at the show, Hartley Botanic is to sponsor a Main Avenue show garden for the first time. Designed by Catherine MacDonald from Landform UK, the garden takes its inspiration from a design by Thomas Heatherwick, one of Britain's most gifted and imaginative designers. The feature glasshouse, attached to what would be a walled garden, will appear to be emerging from a pool.
The plan is to deliver a garden that celebrates the best of British engineering innovation and in particular the British engineered glasshouse structures for which Hartley Botanic is renowned the world over.
The likely owner might be a large garden-owning gentleman who wants a glasshouse as a retreat and a home for an assortment of tropical, aquatic ands carnivorous plants, and from which views of surrounding woodland could be appreciated.
The scene will evoke a rural garden in southern England and the view from the greenhouse and surrounding water will depict woodland type planting. There will also be a mixture of flowering perennials and vegetables on the other side of the wall.
The Cloudy Bay Garden, created by young, talented landscape designer Sam Ovens, explores the notion of escape in its fourth Chelsea project. 
The design is a secluded retreat in which to escape, a serene space that evokes memories as one breathes and savours the experience of the garden.
The primary material is western red cedar timber, which is used in the construction of a deck, boardwalks and cabin, a waterside retreat.
A large reflective pool adds a sensory element, with connotations of setting sail and drifting away, or even escaping. The cabin and boardwalk elements have a pontoon-like quality.
The architectural structure of Cloudy Bay signature wines, Pinot Noir and Sauvignon Blanc, are alluded to throughout the garden’s structure and planting. The Marlborough terroir with its micro-climates and diverse soil types that deliver the intricacies of flavour and aroma are represented through the planting palette which is made up primarily of heathers, pines and grasses, punctuated with ‘jewel like’ exotic heath spotted orchids, agapanthus and Potentilla x Tonguei
Maria Ines Pina, senior brand manager at Cloudy Bay, said: “Sam has perfectly captured the essence of Cloudy Bay in this design. This garden is a perfect representation of natural luxury, with Sam's clean lines, serene water and planting providing a place to escape with a glass of wine in hand.”
