A LOCAL team of garden designers have won a gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show.

The Royal Horticultural Society exhibit designed and built by Leaf Creative Gardens in the Great Pavilion was commissioned by The Blue Diamond Group, the country’s biggest garden centre group.

The team also picked up the ‘Best Tree in Show’ award for an Acer palmatum ‘Shishi-gashira’ that was borrowed for the exhibit from Leaf’s collection.

Peter Dowle, Leaf Creative Gardens founder who started the business as the Howle Hill Nursery which is now based in Huntley, is no stranger to the world famous flower show having created 26 show gardens there, working with top designers such as Chris Beardshaw, Sarah Eberle and James Basson, winning many gold medals.

A Corsican-inspired garden that he designed and built in 2012 also scooped gold. “It is wonderful to be back at Chelsea and to build in the Great Pavilion for the first time,” Mr Dowle said.

“There is nothing like the buzz of being on site during the build and we’re delighted with the result. It’s been a great journey for us and the team. It’s been good to work closely with Blue Diamond and to deliver their first Chelsea gold.”

The display, which took nine days to put together, showcases the range of plants available at Blue Diamond outlets. It includes several new varieties, which were launched at the show, among them the first groundcover hydrangea and four new roses.

Rosa ‘Stronger Together’ is being launched on behalf of charity Muscular Dystrophy UK while ‘Vianne’s Chocolat’ celebrates the publication of ‘Vianne’, a new book by best-selling author Joanne Harris.

Leaf Creative Gardens have taken several of their own large specimen plants to the display, including a six metre Wollemi Pine, one of the rarest plants that dates back to the time of the dinosaurs.

The Wollemi nobilis was believed to have been extinct with only fossils available until 1994 when around 100 trees were discovered in a secret gorge in Australia.

The tree on the RHS Chelsea display is one of the original breeding programme specimens, propagated as part of a world-wide conservation project.

The Chelsea Show comes at the end of a busy few weeks for Leaf Creative Gardens. The team has just finished relocating ‘The Octavia Hill Garden’ by Blue Diamond at its new home in Bridgemere Show Gardens, Cheshire.

The garden won the People’s Choice and Children’s Choice awards at last year’s Chelsea Flower Show. In addition, Leaf Creative Gardens filled the Cheltenham Jazz Festival with plants and dressed the festival theatre stage at the Royal Horticultural Society Malvern Spring Festival.

Alan Roper, managing director for Blue Diamond Garden Centres concluded: “One needs a great team to enable a vision, and we are immensely proud and buzzing from winning our first Gold at Chelsea. The enjoyment we all receive from participating in this amazing, best in the World Flower Show is worth its weight in gold.”