RHS Chatsworth: Brewin Dolphin Installation to take visitors back in time

Gold medal-winning garden designer Paul Hervey-Brookes will be creating a conceptual installation at this year’s RHS Chatsworth Flower Show, using elements of a village that once stood in the grounds of Chatsworth House to question our relationship with time and the natural world.

Influenced by the eighteenth century village that existed before being moved to make way for Capability Brown’s celebrated landscape, the Brewin Dolphin Installation will prompt visitors to think about landscape, our interaction with it and what elements of the past we value. The Installation will draw on historical forms to create a pavilion over four metres high that will act as a centre point to the space.

Featuring plants that would have grown at the time of the village, the installation will give visitors the chance to experience the horticulture of the past and see it in direct contrast to the current landscape. The timber pavilion will use the structural shapes of the lost houses, whilst elsewhere, immersed amongst dense areas of colourful planting, a collection of cylindrical concrete sculptures, some tall, some small, will represent people who have come and gone across the landscape over time.

Paul said: “I first heard about the village on a tour of Chatsworth with the Duke of Devonshire. He took me up on to the roof of the house and showed me how the footprint of the houses could still be seen in dry weather. The idea that an entire village, once tangible and solid, should be removed, fascinated me and designing the Brewin Dolphin Installation has given me a unique opportunity to explore this alongside the nature of time and our perception of it. We think of time as being linear because of the way we live but it’s not necessarily like that. The Brewin Dolphin installation will fuse different timelines together, combining the existing landscape with elements of the past, but importantly prompting questions around that which we choose to keep and that which is forsaken to progress”.

Above: The Brewin Dolphin Installation

Planting
Planting will combine native plants that would have been common at the time, with decorative varieties that would have been introduced in later years. Herb expert Jekka McVicar will grow eight specialist varieties especially for the garden, all of which would have been used both as medicine and food by those living there. Included amongst these, Wild Angelica, used as a vegetable until the 20th century and taken as a medicine to treat ailments such as scurvy; Sanguisorba, better known as Salad Burnet, one of the staple herbs to travel across the Atlantic with the Pilgrim Fathers; and Tanacetum, sometimes known as Bachelor’s Button or Feverfew, which is still used to treat migraines today.

Images: Main - Wild Angelia. Left - Tanacetum. Right - Sanguisorba