Wildlife Gardening & the Chelsea Experience

The team at Oakington Garden Centre created an award winning wildlife garden for this year's Chelsea Flower Show.

"Blooming Numbers" drew together a love of the beauty of plants with recognition of their vital role sustaining pollinators and the wider ecosystem. 

The exhibit, a collaboration with the University of Cambridge's Sainsbury Laboratory, explored the consequences of the co-evolution of flower and pollinators, incorporating the Pollinator Patch designed by Oakington Garden Centre's Melanie Sadler. This showcased how even the smallest garden can support a rich variety of plants and pollinators. It can be both beautiful and provide the vital elements insects need: food, shelter and water.

Come and find out about how they have nurtured wildlife at their Garden Centre site over many years, how this informs their business and especially how this inspired their creation for this year's Chelsea Flower Show.

Melanie and Philip Sadler founded the family business in 1981 on a local agricultural field. As the business has grown, so has the wildlife. Patricia, their daughter, will highlight how they have nurtured this wildlife whilst developing a successful business. And which, perhaps inevitably, enthused Melanie to rise to the challenge and design a wildlife garden for exhibition.

What's more, there will be some tips on how you too can support wildlife in your own garden.

So come and join us to find out more.

Doors open at 7pm.