PRESS RELEASE
30 March 2023
RHS-BBC Morning Live Budget-friendly Feature Garden, RHS Hampton Court Garden Festival 2023, Mark Lane, Mark Lane Designs Ltd
Budget-friendly Garden at RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival 2023 [click here]
RHS-BBC Morning Live Budget-friendly Feature Garden designed by Mark Lane
With UK households looking for ways to save money, The RHS and BBC Morning Live are joining forces at this year’s RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival (4-9 July) with a garden full of creative, cost-effective tips and ideas to help keep the nation growing for their health and wellbeing this summer.
Designed by BBC Morning Live’s resident gardener Mark Lane, the ‘RHS-BBC Morning Live Budget-friendly Feature Garden’ will show ways to use household goods and equipment in the garden, and includes the use of cheap and readily-available drought-tolerant plants, as well as recycled materials such as scaffold boards, plant pots and pallets.
The fully accessible garden aims to inspire gardeners of all abilities. Full of fruit, vegetables and edible flowers, including some that can be grown from food waste, it will demonstrate that you don’t need a large space to feed the family with home grown produce.
Helena Pettit, RHS Director of Gardens & Shows said:
We’re delighted to be partnering with BBC Morning Live on this garden to help highlight ways people can garden on a budget. Gardening doesn’t have to be expensive and there are lots of ways through plant propagation, reusing and recycling materials and water conservation that means everyone can continue to garden and grow whilst also saving money.
Here are five of Mark Lanes top money saving tips:
The RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival runs from 4 – 9 July and tickets are available to buy online at www.rhs.org.uk/hamptoncourt.
– Ends –
Notes to Editors
For further information, interviews and images, please contact showspr@rhs.org.uk.
About the RHS
Since our formation in 1804, the RHS has grown into the UK’s leading gardening charity, touching the lives of millions of people. Perhaps the secret to our longevity is that we’ve never stood still. In the last decade alone we’ve taken on the largest hands-on project the RHS has ever tackled by opening the new RHS Garden Bridgewater in Salford, Greater Manchester, and invested in the science that underpins all our work by building RHS Hilltop – The Home of Gardening Science.
We have committed to being net positive for nature and people by 2030. We are also committed to being truly inclusive and to reflect all the communities of the UK.
Across our five RHS gardens we welcome more than three million visitors each year to enjoy over 34,000 different cultivated plants. Events such as the world famous RHS Chelsea Flower Show, other national shows, our schools and community work, and partnerships such as Britain in Bloom, all spread the shared joy of gardening to wide-reaching audiences.
Throughout it all we’ve held true to our charitable core – to encourage and improve the science, art and practice of horticulture –to share the love of gardening and the positive benefits it brings.
For more information visit www.rhs.org.uk.
About Mark Lane
Mark Lane Designs Ltd is a multi-award-winning garden design practice now based in Lincolnshire. With an emphasis on accessible, sustainable and sensory gardens rich in biodiversity, the practice receives commissions from private clients, charities, hospitals, rehabilitation centres and development companies.
With a background in art and architecture, Mark brings a unique perspective when it comes to designing bespoke gardens for clients, whether residential, public or institutional.
When designing the RHS-BBC Morning Live Budget-friendly Feature Garden Mark wanted to intentionally leave it to look like it’s a DIY project –
something that anyone can achieve at home
Bringing Mark’s skills of searching through recycling bins, hunting down ‘grey timber’ which would otherwise end up being burnt or sent to landfill, scouring kitchen cupboards and the bottom of the fridge, upcycling pieces of furniture and introducing 22 gardening tips that have appeared on BBC Morning Live over the last few years, this garden will hopefully resonate with a lot of the visitors and viewers.
Mark continues:
The British Isles were once covered in dense forest, but a growing population and a fuel-hungry economy depleted the forests until by 1900 only 5% of British soil was woodland, compared to the European average of 44%. Thanks to forestry efforts coverage has doubled since then, but still falls far short of the government target of 17-19% by 2050. Despite this lack of trees, the UK demand for wood is stronger than ever, and in 2020 we imported about 48 million cubic metres of wood products (80% of our total consumption), making us one of the biggest importers of wood in the world. About 22% of this was timber and panels for use in the construction industry. Not only does transporting this much wood around the world create substantial emissions, but imported wood is more likely to be a product of deforestation. It’s estimated that around a million cubic metres of illegal timber enter the UK each year. Wood recycling has also undergone a massive boom in the UK, from less than 2% of wood waste in 1990 to more than 80% in 2020, thanks to growth in our biomass and composite panel industries.
In 2020 the UK generated around 4.5 million tonnes of waste wood. This wood comes from a number of different sectors, including construction, demolition, manufacturing and wood processing. In addition, households produce huge quantities of waste wood that end up at local Council-run recycling centres and of course, waste pallets by the million and a large quantity of wooden packaging waste are produced right across every sector of the economy. Until quite recently, most of this ended up in landfill – a shameful way of dealing with a potentially valuable resource, where it just rots and releases methane and other gasses that contribute to climate change. Thankfully over the last few years things have changed and in 2020 around 4 million tonnes of waste wood was recycled. The majority (around 65%) of wood that is diverted by what we call the high-volume wood recycling industry is not reused, but chipped and burnt in power stations to produce low-carbon electricity. A lot of it (around 26%) is used in the manufacture of composite sheet materials such as MDF, chipboard and OSB. Most of the remainder (9%) is used for animal bedding or for landscape surfaces.
In addition,
Britons send over 50% of reusable furniture to landfill every year. 22 million pieces of furniture are discarded each year in the UK, and the majority of this furniture is sent directly to landfill. Less than 1 in 10 people consider repairing their furnishings to extend their life span. 1.6 million tonnes of bulky waste – 42% of which is furniture and 19% textiles, equating to a total of 670,000 tonnes of furniture and 310,000 tonnes of textiles waste is disposed by householders in the UK annually and sent to landfill. 110,000 tonnes of furniture at Household Waste and Recycling Centres is re-usable in its current condition. 32% per cent of bulky waste is re-usable in its current state, and this figure rises to 51% if we take into account items requiring slight repair. 30% of adults throw away household items that could have been donated, sold or reused and a fifth of 16-24-year-olds don’t actually know how to recycle or donate, according to new research from The British Heart Foundation.
Notes to Editors
For further information, please contact the RHS or Mark Lane directly on either 07808 767 334 or 07801 357 819 www.marklanedesigns.com
HERBACEOUS PERENNIALS:
GRASSES:
SHRUBS AND TREES:
FRUIT TREES:
EDIBLES/HERBS:
Mark Lane (Principal Designer)
Jasen Cavalli (Assistant)
Martin Merrigan (Main Contractor)
Christopher Haile (Joiner)
Ciaran Merrigan
Lily Merrigen
Dean Togher
Will Crowe
Steve Swallow
Sophia Siddiqui
George Fox
Darren Geritas
Alfie Geritas
John Geritas
Nick Hutchinson
Tom Kirkpatrick
Travis Perkins
– Market Rasen
– Twickenham
Breedon Aggregates
Dalefoot Composts
Hilliers
Jon Wheatley
Plants2Gardens
Pots and Pithoi
Provender Nurseries
Terry Porter
– PR and Advertising
Mark Lane Designs Ltd
Mark Lane
Emma Mason PR
Emma Mason
Portrait Mark Lane, Mark Lane Designs Ltd
Mark Lane’s biography reveals that he has led a remarkable life. He is extremely creative, productive and has a unique perspective on life, landscape design, gardening, art history and disability.
Mark was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Kent in 2022 for his contribution to garden design and TV.
He has gained recognition as a first-class landscape designer, being the UK’s first garden designer in a wheelchair, as well as the first BBC gardening presenter in a wheelchair.
Author of Royal Gardens of the World (Kyle Books (Hachette UK)), 2020. Available to buy from Amazon
Mark is also the garden expert for Stannah.
Mark Lane’s biography is far from dull. He is a TV broadcaster of the award winning BBC Gardeners’ World and the Royal Horticultural Society’s Flower Shows – Chelsea, Hampton Court Palace, Chatsworth, Tatton. BBC Gardeners’ World is one of the handful of factual TV programmes with a long pedigree of 50 years, viewed by a staggering 3 million people on a weekly basis, in the UK alone.
Mark:
First and foremost I am a presenter, who just happens to be in a chair, but if I can be an inspiration to other people, then all the better for it.
Mark is also the garden expert presenter on BBC Morning Live with a staggering 2 million viewers a day, as well as the garden design and plant expert for QVC, with his own programme ‘Love Gardening with Mark Lane’.
Mark graduated from University College London in Art History with B.A. (Hons). He went on to become the Publishing Director for the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the Managing Editor for the leading international Arts publisher Thames & Hudson.
In 2000 Mark was in a car accident and had to have operations on his spine, which were complicated by him being born with spina bifida. Following a long rehabilitation period Mark studied garden design through an Open Learning course and has gone on to become the first recognised UK garden designer in a wheelchair.
A prolific writer, Mark has been in BBC Gardeners’ World magazine, the Royal Horticultural Society’s (RHS) journal The Garden, Which? Gardening, Landscape & Urban Design magazine, The Guardian newspaper, the Daily Mail newspaper, Daily Express newspaper, Sunday Express newspaper, The Sunday Telegraph newspaper, the Wealden Times magazine, Pro Landscaper, Kent Life and Surrey Homes, Life magazines, Conservation News, Enable Active magazine, RNOH magazine, Irish Examiner, Somerset County Gazette, Darlington and Stockton Times, Irish News, Canterbury INDEX magazine, House Beautiful, House & Garden, and the Press Association.
Mark has a regular column in Platinum magazine, Garden News and Waitrose Weekend.
Mark is also a member of the Garden Media Guild.
Born in Hertfordshire in 1969, the family soon moved to Hove, just outside of Brighton. Mark: “I was very lucky growing up where I did. We overlooked the South Downs, with the countryside in walking distance to the north, and the beach to the south. As soon as I could walk I was fascinated by nature, wildlife, plants and art.”
Mark’s earliest gardening memories are of him, aged 6 or 7, following his grandparents around their large garden, especially the veggie patch, growing cress on the window sill, tying in climbers and dead-heading plants.
With an aptitude to paint and draw from a very young age, Mark would set up his easel to depict the rolling hills, the ocean, and the local flora and fauna.
Mark was also a gifted young actor and flautist and when it came to choosing a university Mark had to decide between art and music. Art won the day, and with a fascination in the cultural, social and psychology aspects of art Mark started to put together a plan for his future, incorporating his love for words and art.
His meteoric rise in publishing was rewarding and great fun, but the car accident in 2001 altered his career path. Mark: “I am so happy now, presenting on subjects that I love and am passionate about. As well as creating new landscapes and gardens for future generations to come”.
Mark is passionate about promoting a positive image of disability, as well as the immediate and long-term benefits that gardening has on both our physical and mental health.
Mark is a Global Ambassador for Leonard Cheshire, the national and international charity supporting individuals to live, learn and work as independently as they choose, whatever their ability.
Mark is the new Patron of Core Landscapes, an award-winning mental health project that aims to improve people’s mental and physical wellbeing through horticulture. It opens up previously locked sites to create green havens for individuals and the wider local community.
Mark is a new Ambassador for Greenfingers, the national charity dedicated to supporting children who spend time in hospices around the UK, along with their families, by creating inspiring gardens and outdoor spaces for them to benefit from.
Mark is the Health, Wellbeing and Community’ Ambassador for Groundwork, the community charity with a green heart carrying out thousands of projects each year across the UK, building stronger communities by improving green spaces.
Mark is an Ambassador for Thrive, the disability charity that uses gardening to positively change lives.
Mark is an Ambassador for the Melanoma Fund, raising awareness of skin cancer and how to prevent it while gardening.
Mark is a Trustee for Gardening with Disabilities Trust, the national charity that gives out grants to disabled people and community groups, to get them back into gardening or to continue to garden themselves actively.
Mark:
I am living proof of how gardening, the great outdoors, wildlife and being alone or with others can dramatically change your life. In a strange but positive way, my disability has made me more determined, and if I can help promote the community and environmental aspects of the great outdoors to thousands of people then I am more than happy to do so.
Mark has appeared on BBC Radio Kent’s Sunday Gardening Programme and has broadcasted on BBC Radio Sussex, BBC Radio Teeside, BBC Radio Three Counties, BBC Radio Leicester, BBC Radio 4, to name just a few.
Mark is just as happy in front of a live crowd as he is in front of the camera. Sharing his excitement, enthusiasm and knowledge with others, Mark has given talks at BBC Gardeners’ World Live, Enham Trust, the Wealden Times Fair, the Landscape Show and Hadlow College.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Self-trained, Mark keeps a visual diary of everything, from TV shoots to plant combinations, but the camerawork is purely an aide-memoire and does not get in the way of presenting.
See the article in House Beautiful here.
See the article on Yahoo Life! here.
See the article in Horticulture Week here.
See the article on Dalefoot’s website here.
See the article on BALI’s website here.
click on the document below and use the page buttons at the bottom of the page
BBC Morning Live Take Home Ideas – Mark Lane Designs Ltd