The ‘Protect Our Playground’ featured at Hampton Court Palace Flower Show 2022 within the community allotments section. This allotment aims to educate on the importance of protecting our soils and reconnecting with nature in partnership with Plastic Free North Devon.
On the allotment, everything is edible, homegrown, reused or repurposed, and centres primarily around captivating grown ups’ imaginations. By weaving in ideas on how we can protect our planet from plastic waste in a creative and thought-provoking manner, we hope to inspire people to look at everyday items a little differently. Through this, we can reconnect with the soil beneath us, the food we eat and the impact we have.
We are so thrilled to be asked to partner on this project. The combination of Shannon’s gardening talent and passion to help protect and improve our planet will result in something very special. We hope the legacy of her creation will help more people recognise what nurturing plants and nature in a simple, organic, toxic and plastic free way does for our physical, mental and collective planetary health.
Claire Moodie, CEO of Plastic Free North Devon
Allotment features
The Bean Tent is the central focus feature on the allotment, celebrating a variety of peas and beans to create a peaceful place to sit back and relax, enjoying the best view in the house.
To the right of the garden is The Veg Adventure patch, filled with a selection of colourful crops, including pumpkins, courgettes, sweetcorn, beetroot, chard and carrots, all grown on my own allotment in North Devon over the past 6 months, bordered with an array of savoury herbs. To the left is the fruity forest, offering up strawberries, cape gooseberries, melons, a peach tree, a hawthorn tree and other tasty treats, bordered by sweet scented herbs.
Down the central path is a wooden path, created from salvaged wood and hand painted by my best friend of around 15 years, Sarah Duffy. The final key element is the recycling cold frame — Plastic Free North Devon’s Head Volunteer, Andy Clee, built the frame (and the path) from reclaimed materials, and we saved an array of plastic bottles from going to waste to form the panels.
Plant list
For anyone interested to know what’s featured within the plot, here’s the (almost) full planting list:
- Rainbow carrots
- Funky disco beets
- Lady Godiva pumpkin
- Tristar courgette
- Blue ballet squash
- Oregon homestead sweetmeat squash
- Rainbow chard
- Sweetcorn ‘Swift’
- Beans; Leicester tall peas
- Strawberry, lime & Moroccan mint
- Lemon curd, orange & Doon Valley thyme
- Winter savoury; mushroom plant
- Hyssop blue; blackcurrant sage; bay
- Physalis (cape gooseberry)
- Strawberries (mixed varieties)
- Violas (mixed varieties)
- Nasturtiums (Blue pepe, Salmon baby, Ladybird rose)
- Blue & white borage
- Marigolds (mixed varieties)
With thanks to
There are so many people I have to thank for this project coming together. It is a community allotment so it was really important for me that the space featured more than just my own plants. A HUGE thank you to Hayley of BackYard Designs for the stunning signposts; to the Allotment Diary of Lily and Nana for feeding, watering and rescuing the plants; to Shell on Earth for the shells; to Urban Herbs for the fabulous herbs; to Plastic Free North Devon and Andy Clee for building an epic cold frame; to Allotment and Cake for the tall pea seeds; to Sarah for the beautiful path painting; and finally to my mum, brother and sister for their endless support with the most random of tasks.
About Plastic Free North Devon
Plastic Free North Devon is a registered charity (Reg No: 1182464) and local environmental movement on a mission to protect and improve our environment through community-led action. By working with local communities, businesses, organisations and visitors, they aim to tackle plastic pollution head on, inspire reconnection with nature, and facilitate sustainable behaviour change across North Devon.