F&C Garden wins Silver Medal at RHS Chelsea Flower Show

Foreign & Colonial Investments' Garden was today awarded a Silver Medal by the judges at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2009. This news comes a day after the garden was visited by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

The garden, subtitled ‘Waves of Change', is the second collaboration between Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust and garden designer Thomas Hoblyn. Last year the team won Gold for their Urban Garden, Tempest in a Teapot, in a show debut for both sponsor and designer.

The theme of this year's garden, a large Show Garden on the Show's Main Avenue, is sustainability and adaptation, as demonstrated by Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust over its 141-year life. The wetlands of North Carolina and East Anglia provided inspiration for a planting scheme that highlights the vulnerability of highly specialised plants within bogs, such as the carnivorous pitcher plants Sarracenia flava, and celebrates the adaptability of other plant species including the majestic swamp cypress Taxodium distichum, which can happily grow either on the land or rising out of the water.

Garden designer Thomas Hoblyn said: "We worked with what we had on quite a small budget compared with some of the other Show Gardens, and a lot of volunteers did a fantastic job - we should all be proud of ourselves. The feedback we have had from visitors to the Show has been great, and some of the television presenters have been saying our garden is the best."

Jeremy Tigue, manager of Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust, added: "We are very pleased that our garden has been recognised with this medal. An astonishing amount of work has gone into the planning and creation of this garden and it has been wonderful to watch it take shape here at the Show."

On Press Day at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show on Monday, Foreign & Colonial Investments' Garden saw personal appearances from environmental activist and Conservative Party parliamentary candidate Zac Goldsmith, and up-and-coming singer-songwriter VV Brown, who performed a song on the garden's redwood deck, built from a windfall tree that also forms the garden's defining ‘waves of change' sculpture.

Celebrities including Stephen Fry, Joanna Lumley, Jennie Bond and Floella Benjamin visited the garden, which featured prominently on BBC2's Monday evening coverage of the show, including being the stage for Alan Titchmarsh's introduction to the programme. The garden will feature again on the BBC's coverage at 12.30pm today.

The garden is watched over by a ‘Guardian of the Environment', sculpted in copper mesh by Niki Taylor. This ideal of feminine beauty represents the role humanity must play in helping our planet cope with and adapt to the ever increasing pace of environmental and economic change - something that has been key to Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust since it was founded in 1868.

During its 141-year life Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust has outlasted 23 Prime Ministers. However, the current Queen is only the sixth monarch since the Trust first pioneered collective investing under Queen Victoria.