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Monday 28 May 2012

Landscape threatened by turbines wins gold at Chelsea


Photo from Welcome to Yorkshire

My first Chelsea and I get gold, it doesn't get much better than this! I'm so proud of what we have achieved. I hope the high profile medal inspires more people to come to Yorkshire to see for themselves the landscape that brought gold to the garden.

These are the words (as quoted by Martin Wainwright in the Guardian’s Northerner Blog) of Tracy Foster, the Leeds garden designer , who worked closely with the Parsonage while she was creating her gold-winning entry for this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. It also collected the People's Garden award.


The materials for the Brontë Garden, which has had a non-stop stream of admirers since the Show opened, were sourced as far as possible from the area around Haworth, including boulders from Dove Stones Moor. Those Chelsea admirers who have actually visited Yorkshire and walked up to Top Withens will surely have recognized the little bridge of slabs across the beck near the Brontë Falls.

And how many of those admirers know that the wonderful Yorkshire landscape which inspired the garden is now under threat from giant turbines, which will be visible for miles across the moors? Turbines can be beautiful, I hear some of their defenders claim, a monster-sized equivalent of windmills in the Netherlands.

In which case, we can no doubt look forward to next year’s Yorkshire entries for Chelsea which incorporate them looming in the background...





2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A beautiful garden which richly deserved the accolade; but the heading is misleading. The turbines are NOT proposed for the Bronte Moor, so the bridge and waterfall will not be affected.

B. Skilet said...

The chief executive of Leeds based 'Welcome to Yorkshire' is quoted as having said that this Yorkshire garden will showcase to the world the wild and wonderful landscape of Yorkshire and that it is hoped that it will encourage more people to rediscover this northern area.
I read that the garden featured a stream, a clapper bridge and other elements of the area the Brontes were familiar with- gained inspiration from and loved- and which are characteristic of this wild and rugged area of Yorkshire perched on top of the Yorkshire Pennines.
Perhaps 'characteristic' is the key word here and also to the success of the garden- it could be argued that giant turbines are not.