The Gold Award winning Ruskin Mill Trust Artisan Woodland Craft Garden at RHS Badminton Flower Show

We are incredibly proud to announce that Rachael Austin’s Ruskin Mill Trust Artisan Woodland Craft Garden has been awarded an RHS Gold Medal and named Best Artisan Garden at the inaugural RHS Badminton Flower Show.

The garden also received a Highly Commended award for Environmental Innovation, a particularly meaningful recognition for us as a certified B Corp committed to creating socially purposeful and ecologically responsible places.

Commissioned by The Ruskin Mill Trust, the garden was designed to demonstrate how landscape, nature and traditional craft can support young people with special educational needs and disabilities.

Inspired by the valleys surrounding Ruskin Mill College in Nailsworth, Rachael’s design brought together coppiced hazel, woodland-edge planting, open glades and productive growing spaces. At its heart was the Trust’s pioneering Practical Skills Therapeutic Education approach, creating opportunities for students to connect hand, head and heart through working directly with natural materials.

Students from Ruskin Mill College played an integral part in the garden’s creation, growing plants at the college farm and demonstrating green woodworking skills throughout the show.

A project of this scale is never the work of one person, and we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to everyone who helped bring it to life.

Thank you to the RHS for selecting and supporting the garden and for creating such a memorable first RHS Badminton Flower Show at Badminton Estate.

Thank you to Ruskin Mill Trust for commissioning, sponsoring and believing in the garden, and for making it possible for the entire scheme to be relocated to Grace Garden School in Bristol, where it will continue to support therapeutic outdoor learning for children and young people.

A huge thank you to Daniel Hoyle (above) and the team at Greener Landscapes, who built the garden with extraordinary skill, patience and determination, including rotavating the hard ground eight times during a heatwave. To achieve an RHS Gold Medal on your first show garden is testament to the exceptional standard of your work.

Thank you to Rachael’s colleagues at Austin Design Works, particularly her brother Matt, and to Carole for her invaluable support behind the scenes.

We are also deeply grateful to the many growers, craftspeople, suppliers and businesses who donated, lent or cultivated materials for the garden, including Woven Wood, Elm Tree Building Services, BTA Structural Design, Old Sodbury Trees and Plants, Allgreen, Natural Grower, Voltaire’s Wood, Nature First, VRD Stroud, Blue Diamond Home & Garden, EverEdge, Graduate Gardeners and Hobbs House Bakery.

Special thanks must also go to Chris the Bodger, who shared his love of pole-lathe turning with visitors throughout the heatwave, and to garden maker and mentor John Hill, who loaned so many special plants from his nursery in Sherborne.

To every volunteer who helped us build the garden in just two weeks, and to the thousands of visitors who stopped to talk, ask questions and share such generous words of appreciation: thank you.

The garden may have been temporary at Badminton, but its purpose and legacy will continue.