The two gardens supported by Perthshire gin business, Highland Boundary, at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show have both won coveted awards.
A Rewilding Britain Landscape, designed by Lulu Urquhart and Adam Hunt, won Best in Show at Chelsea and a gold medal. The Still Garden, created by Scottish-born Jane Porter and inspired by the tradition of distilling, also won a gold medal and Best in Class for balcony and container gardens.
Highland Boundary’s Distiller and founder, Dr Marian Bruce, said:
“We are delighted that both of the gardens we have supported have been recognised so deservedly at the Chelsea Flower Show. We all share a love of nature’s spirit, the importance of healthy biodiversity and landscapes, and we’ve loved collaborating with them and letting people ‘taste’ the gardens.”
The naturalistic Rewilding garden by Lulu Urquhart and Adam Hunt (@urquhart_hunt) includes a whole ecosystem of native plant species, trees and shrubs and a carefully crafted beaver dam. The Still Garden by Jane Porter (@plantyjane) was inspired by the long tradition of distilling in Scotland and the native plants found in the Scottish landscape. Reclaimed Scottish whisky casks are reconstructed to make new sculptural planters and frothy spray-like forms hang like mist or seafoam from a repurposed copper gin distilling pot.
Highland Boundary is renowned for its innovative approach to bringing wild flavours into their multi-award-winning spirits. Based on Kirkbankland Farm near Alyth, its founders, and biologists by trade, Dr Bruce and Simon Montador, have developed their own distilling and extraction techniques based on ancient recipes and ethnobotanical uses of Scotland’s flora.
Highland Boundary created two gin-based cocktails that were served at Chelsea Flower Show, Still Garden Glee, with Scots Pine and rowan, and Wild Landscape, featuring one of the beavers’ favourite trees, the birch, along with hawthorn and honeysuckle syrups and garnished with sweet woodruff, an aromatic woodland flower – all species that were present in the exhibiting gardens.