This Silver Gilt medal winning garden highlights the often-overlooked potential of roadside verges to transform urban spaces into thriving ecosystems. These spaces offer significant ecological benefits, including enhancing biodiversity, improving air quality, and mitigating urban heat and noise pollution. The garden aims to inspire visitors to reimagine these urban landscapes by demonstrating their value, encouraging people to consider how these spaces can benefit local communities, foster a deeper connection to nature, and contribute to healthier, more sustainable cities.  

The garden is centred around a conceptual wildflower meadow with vibrant colours to attract pollinators and create visual impact. Structural grassland provides soil stabilisation and wildlife habitats, while a multi-stem hawthorn acts as a focal point, offering shelter and food for wildlife. Visitors can expect a beautiful, ecologically functional space that reimagines road verges as thriving ecosystems. The design is inspired by the designers’ daily commute through the city and out to the countryside. Pollinator corridors create inspiring interludes to the daily grind and add a sense of connection to the natural world, even in the heart of the city.

Nessie Ramm
Artist Nessie Ramm has created a bespoke roadside sign for the project, blending art and ecology to draw attention to the value of road verges. Nessie is the winner of the NEAC Climate Emergency Prize 2025 and works with Plantlife as their Creative Friend. Her work invites passers- by to pause, reflect, and see beauty and purpose in the everyday landscape. nessieramm.co.uk

Niche
The design incorporates reimagined bollards that double as habitats for solitary bees, transforming familiar urban fixtures into life-supporting structures. Designed by Niche, it integrates nesting cavities blending function with conservation, it quietly supports pollinators often overlooked in cityscapes. The piece invites new ways of thinking about biodiversity in the built environment - practical, purposeful, and beautifully discreet. niche-environmental.co.uk