A centrepiece garden at this year’s Chelsea flower show has been built with the help of a team of asylum seekers with a design that recreates Europe’s migration routes and uses materials found in refugee camps.
The Choose Love garden, named after a charity working with displaced people, uses the sustainable “superadobe” building technique found in camp architecture.
Featuring plants native to north Africa and Europe, it includes materials such as corrugated iron. A stone path resembling a dry streambed reflects waterway migration, while big boulders recall those used by the authorities to thwart makeshift refugee camps in France.
The garden is one of the most political to grace the annual event and comes at a time when the home secretary has been accused of using dehumanising language to describe people trying to reach the UK. Its creators say they want its “message of hope” to reach the millions who will watch TV coverage of the event, which is expected to be visited by King Charles.
“Increasingly it feels like we’re living in a very polarised society, and in polarised spaces online, so finding ways for us to connect and have conversations is really important,” said Josie Naughton, co-founder and CEO of Choose Love, which provides refugees with everything from lifesaving search-and-rescue boats to food and legal advice.
After the show, which takes place 22-27 May, the garden will be relocated to Good Food Matters in Croydon – a community food learning centre and garden working with people including those who have been forced to flee their homes.
Among the volunteers who helped to build the garden was a man from a Central American country who told the Guardian the charity had helped with his mental health problems, which have worsened over the course of the two years he has been living in a hotel waiting for his asylum application to be processed.
“Honestly, it is one of the lights in this journey that has helped my wife and I to cope,” said the man, who was reluctant to be identified while their application is still live. The couple said they had been forced to flee their country due to the threat of gang violence after finding themselves “in the wrong place at the wrong time”.
The garden initiative and Good Food Matters brought them into contact with others in a similar state of limbo. Frustrated at the waste of their diverse range of professional skills, the volunteers spoke of how the garden had renewed their sense of purpose.
The garden was created in collaboration with the designer Jane Porter – a gold medal winner at last year’s show, organised by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) – who visited a refugee camp in Samos, Greece, as part of her research.
She said she had been inspired by what had been achieved by Choose Love, which was co-founded by her sister Dawn. She added: “In this garden we see linear drifts of the plants that are found along now established migration routes and discover what people grow when they don’t know when or if they’ll return home – when the act of planting becomes an act of hope.”
