Barony garden wins a Silver Gilt at Gardening Scotland

Barony College horticulture students are celebrating after scooping a prestigious Silver Gilt Medal at Gardening Scotland, Scotland’s answer to the Chelsea Flower Show, last weekend.

Barony College horticulture students are celebrating after scooping a prestigious Silver Gilt Medal at Gardening Scotland, Scotland’s answer to the Chelsea Flower Show, last weekend.

The Japanese ‘Autumn Corner’ garden, designed by student Stanislav Ujhazi, was inspired by his love of the gardens of Japan and it impressed judges and show visitors alike with its ambitious design and atmospheric planting.  The fully enclosed garden featured 4 moon gates, a running stream of water, bamboo cladding and a centrepiece of larch, hostas and ornamental grasses which grew up through a hole in the centre of the roof.  The students added to the calm, relaxing atmosphere by playing Japanese music, burning incense and building a natural bench of natural cut logs in the shade.

Barony’s garden was one of seven college gardens taking part in the event and with 2 Gold Medals and 3 Silver Gilts presented, it was the most competitive year yet.  Barony’s success is all the more remarkable as their garden cost around one tenth of the others.  Horticulture Lecturer, Paul Page explained:

“Our garden cost £600 to build and it probably had a value of around £1,200.  All the other college gardens cost between £5,000 and £6,000 and one actually cost over £23,000, so to hold our own amid such financial outlay is fantastic.

“We are a small college and we see taking part in Gardening Scotland as an opportunity for our students to showcase their creativity, and this means being creative with the resources they have as well as being creative in their approach to garden design and planting.  For example, we sourced the larches from our forestry nursery while the water feature was made from three plastic buckets.    

“The students all worked incredibly hard to build the garden against a very tight deadline and everyone is thrilled by this excellent result.”

As well as the show garden two Barony horticulture students took part in the Worldskills UK Landscape Gardening competition.  Kirsten Hinselwood from Dumfries and Ed Malone from Moffat each built a 2m x 3m garden from scratch in just 8 hours in the blistering Saturday heat, including laying paving and decking, planting and woodwork.

Nethermill Primary School, who were supported by Barony College in entering the Pallet Garden, a one metre square garden, also received a Silver Gilt Medal.