Roadside verge garden given new permanent home

An award-winning garden designed to look like a roadside verge will be rehomed outside an East Sussex nature reserve.

Life on the Verge, designed by Eastbourne-based landscapers Wild Design Studio, was created to show how roadside verges can promote biodiversity.

The garden, which won a silver gilt medal at the Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival, will now be moved to the Railway Land nature reserve in Lewes to give it a permanent home.

Volunteers will be joined by pupils from Western Road School and young people on work placements to help to rebuild the garden on Monday.

Helen Meade, chief executive of the Railway Land Wildlife Trust, said the garden "challenges the idea that nature only belongs in the countryside, showing how wildness can thrive in unexpected places and offer space for connection, care and wellbeing".

The garden will from part of the Lewes Mosaic project which aims to bring more wildlife-friendly spaces to the town.

Life on the Verge features wildflowers and grasses alongside an artwork depicting a road sign and bee posts, which provide nesting spaces for the insects, in the shape of roadside bollards.

Mary-Anne O'Brien, one of the garden's designers, said verges were "often wasted spaces" but there was "so much potential for them to become wildlife havens".

The garden was designed by Ms O'Brien and colleagues Robin Dunlop and Laura London and is intended to sit alongside a road in an urban setting.

Follow BBC Sussex on Facebook, on X, and on Instagram. Send your story ideas to [email protected] or WhatsApp us on 08081 002250.