Beekeeper nets prize
Tuesday June 2, 2009
Beekeeper Philippa O'Brien
Hammersmith's Philippa O'Brien caused a real buzz at the Chelsea Flower Show by picking up two medals for her gardening displays.
The keen beekeeper and urban gardener, who has lived in Dalling Road with her husband Patrick for 27 years, proved a big success at the five-day event in May, bagging two Silver-Gilt Lindley awards in the continuous learning category.
One of Philippa's winning exhibits was a garden composting display, which she presented with the help of 12 students from Capel Manor College, Gunnersbury Park, where she teaches horticulture.
"I was thrilled. You never know how you're going to do [at the flower show] and it was great for the young ones to get the medal. They had a really wonderful time there," she said.
All entries in the category followed the theme of environmental awareness this year, and Philippa's display featured a composted vegetable garden and a range of composting bins.
"This was a garden initially grown by students, and it emphasises how important it is for people to compost their gardens," she said. "If you keep all your compost onsite, then your carbon output is smaller."
Philippa said the composting display also focussed on the importance of recycling and using sustainable materials in urban gardens. "If you think about modern garden design, it tends to use a lot of imported stone and also a lot of concrete and hard landscaping which is incredibly bad for the environment," she said. "Decking and timbers are also usually from an unsustainable source. So we're encouraging people to recycle materials."
The avid beekeeper scored a second medal for presenting a British Beekeepers' Association display called `Bees Need Gardeners' - which proved a hive of activity.
"Everyone seems fascinated with bees at the moment." Philippa also presented information on a range of trees that gardeners could think about planting to give bees foraging opportunities for up to 10 months of the year.
"We also gave out information on what people should do if they find a swarm of bees in their garden," she said. "We want them to ring their local beekeeper, who will take the bees away, rehouse them, and allow them to continue making honey."
The indefatigable gardener has bagged six other awards at the Chelsea Flower Show over the past 10 years for her range of courtyard and show garden displays. For her next project, Philippa will design a garden for the Henry VIII 500th anniversary celebrations, coinciding with the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show from July 7-12.
"They're creating six gardens, one for each of Henry VIII's wives, and I've been asked to do Catherine Howard, who was his fifth wife," Philippa said. "She was married at 14 and beheaded at 16. So there will be a four-poster bed made of thyme, because she didn't have much! And the garden will be pink and white and fluffy and teenage-girlish, and then through the middle there will be a streak of Crocosmia Lucifer. "It's a brilliant scarlet, representing a streak of wickedness."
