Marketing Manchester will exhibit ‘The Manchester Garden’ at the Chelsea Flower Show next year.
The Garden is designed by Exterior Architecture and will exhibit in the ‘Space to Grow’ category alongside several other designs, including ones from Facebook and IKEA.
It will “offer a fresh perspective on post-industrial cities through several rich and progressive themes that point to the reinvention of Greater Manchester, its resilience and its adaptability”.
The Garden will also aim to raise important questions about how cities manage urban green infrastructure in the face of climate change, rising temperatures and more frequent weather extremes.
There will be 10 trees to represent the 10 boroughs of Greater Manchester; a water feature telling the story of the region’s waterways; a commissioned sculpture that showcases the journey from one-time Cottonpolis to the home of the wonder material graphene; and a paved area created with local sandstone, named after founding city elder Sir Joseph Whitworth.
Sheona Southern, managing director of Marketing Manchester, said: “Greater Manchester is a -pioneering city-region that is currently facing one of the most pronounced and exciting periods of change in its very colourful modern history.
“In partnership we’ve spent the best part of a decade and a half working to create a new narrative about the city-region; a long-term project that is now being realised nationally and internationally in terms of city attractiveness and success.
“So what better way to announce this reinvention to the world, than to take the story of Manchester to one of the country’s most well-respected and prestigious events.
“We are striving to be a green city and we also have the biggest garden project in Europe coming up in the next few years in the shape of Salford’s RHS Bridgewater. It’s beyond time then, that we present something bold and beautiful to the world to tackle head-on some of the tired assumptions and pre-conceptions about our wonderful post-industrial, original modern city.”
The project will be funded and supported entirely through project partners and will offer a very special set of opportunities for those involved.
