National Forest partnering with the Meta Garden: Growing the Future, designed by Joe Perkins, to help highlight the power of communities and woodland biodiversity

The Meta Garden: Growing the Future is a forest-inspired garden, which will highlight how trees can help combat climate change, enhance biodiversity, and leave a flourishing legacy for future generations.  The garden has been designed to highlight the crucial relationship between soil, fungi and plants, which together form the basis of resilient forest ecosystems. 

After the Chelsea Flower Show, held 24th-28th May 2022, the garden will be rehomed at a location in the National Forest as part of The Queen’s Green Canopy campaign focused on planting trees to celebrate The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. 

The garden will be an immersive experience, featuring a complex pavilion structure that represents the mycelium networks that connect and support woodland life, a central seating area set within the environment rather than imposed above it, and a unique interactive installation that will bring to life the complex communication webs in nature beneath our feet. 

Designer Joe Perkins won three awards with his Chelsea debut for Facebook in 2019 with the Space to Grow garden, including an RHS Gold medal, Best Construction and the coveted Best in Category, a first for any Chelsea Flower Show newcomer. 

Joe Perkins said: “I hope visitors will feel immersed in and inspired by nature’s interconnectedness and the myriad of macro and microscopic networks in nature that depend on each other to heal, grow, and thrive.   

“There is an urgent need to redress the balance of our relationship with the natural world, and there is so much to learn from the connections in nature, both in terms of how we learn to support and preserve sustainable forest ecosystems, and in how we act together as communities ourselves to tackle climate change.” 

Following a successful partnership in 2019, Meta - the owner of Facebook and Instagram - is proud to partner with Joe again on a garden that embodies communities in all its forms and sizes: woodland-wide and microscopic; individual and collective. 

 Meta’s VP of Northern Europe, Steve Hatch, said: “The Meta Garden is all about championing natural ways in which we can tackle climate change and how we can protect our wonderful British woodlands.  

“We’ve seen a boom in enthusiastic plant-lovers across the UK during the pandemic.  Individuals and communities are coming together on places like Facebook Groups and Instagram to share their tips, get inspired, and educate themselves on how we can all make more sustainable decisions for our planet.” 

John Everitt, Chief Executive of the National Forest, said: “This is a forest of people, as much as trees, and is a forest for everyone. We are stronger growing together, as an entity, like the forest itself and the unseen mycelium that underpins its biodiversity. The networks of the National Forest are strong, and are essential to the changes we have seen over the past 30 years working with partners to create the Forest. We believe in the power of trees to transform people’s lives and the landscape, and will be excited to see Joe Perkins’s Meta garden relocated to the Forest. Many more people will be able to see it here and enjoy his interpretation of our interdependence through a forest-inspired garden.” 

 Following RHS Chelsea Flower Show, the garden will be rehomed in the National Forest, at a location to be announced.