Continuum

 

Continuum is City of Wolverhampton College's show garden for the 2009 BBC Gardeners' World Live exhibition, illustrating how an outdoor space evolves over time to reflect changing family life.

 

Designed by garden designers and lecturers Helen Wood and Darren Rudge, and built with the help of students from the college's Cedars Horticultural Centre, Continuum demonstrates how both events from the past and plans for the future influence the layout of a family garden.

Set in a backyard where the muted colours of Honeysuckles, Clematis and Hydrangea create a sense of safety and calmness, carefully selected plants and construction materials acts as constant reminders of the past.

 

The main focal point of the garden is a garden room clad in reclaimed scaffold boards.The room and adjoining patio are paved with a dark jade slate, formed over thousands of years. Breedon gravel, also used as Buckingham Palace, surrounds a water feature by artist Peter Newsome entitled Ethereal. The water feature stands in what could once have been a child's sand pit, hinting at past events.

This sense of history is echoed in the flora and fauna. Against the reclaimed board fencing one flowerbed is devoted to the living fossil Ginkgo Biloba, unchanged for millions of years.

But gardens don't just have a past, they will have a future too, and in Continuum these plans for what lies ahead can be seen in the pathways, where ramps take the place of steps in preparation for old age.

The Grassguard concrete block paving patio beneath the pergola also gives the area a multiple uses, allowing it to be used as either a grassed area or driveway in the future.

The garden can be summed up by a second glass sculpture by Paul Newsome,The Journey, reflecting the journey the garden has been on to arrive at this point.

Artists impression of how the garden might look based on the plans, plants differ from those in the plant list.