Following the success at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2024, little interviews goes “live at Chelsea” to catch up with some of the garden designers that Pro Landscaper has been following throughout their Chelsea journey.

The Freedom from Torture Garden: A Sanctuary for Survivors is a place of sanctuary, peace, and hope where horticultural therapy calms, heals and restores survivors of torture on their journey to recovery.

The silver medal winner has since been rebuild at the Freedom From Torture HQ: Finsbury Park, London, but whilst at Chelsea, co garden designer John Warland took a moment to tell Pro Landscaper about the journey.

Name:  John Warland

Company: SENSELESS ACTS OF BEAUTY LIMITED 

Role: Creative design director 

Show Garden: The Freedom from Torture Garden: A Sanctuary for Survivors 

• What would you say has been the biggest challenge? 

The biggest challenge for this garden, although it’s a naturalistic landscape it is full of curves and it has no rectilinear lines, which you may think would mean it is an easy thing to construct, but not in terms of the level changes. 

Especially going down into the sunken seating area, and then up and around, everything sits within the landscape. Adding in the complexity of the water feature, the positioning of every individual stone, it all had to sit within a tight radius to within 10 or 15 millimetres. This is to avoid creating trip hazards as there is a step going over the stream of water and to make sure people that people can walk over it easily, everything is measured exactly.   

It’s a garden like many great gardens – it looks simple and beautiful, but actually, the level of design – even the height of the boulder you sit on – is all tried and tested under dry conditions and wet conditions to answer the endless questions – what does the gravel look like? And how will it be when it rains? 

I think getting as many features as possible and ideas into the space definitely added to the challenge but I don’t have any regrets! Looking over the garden now, we’ve got this beautiful water feature, the willow everywhere and then the stone oven, with the smell of freshly baked flatbeds and dips. 

We were working with six or seven of the best craftsmen in the United Kingdom to harmonise and actually, to bring it all together. Everything, every single piece, every piece of stone has been handpicked for its dimension. The trees as well – they’re wild, they’re raggedy the plants they will tell a story. You can’t go to a standard nursery and get a cookie cutter plant, these have been picked especially from the back corners, the trees which we have forgotten and windswept, the ones that nobody wanted to buy, but we did. Because it’s these differences that transport you. Every plant has a story to tell – we weren’t looking for perfection, we were looking for chance to tell stories and inspire people. 

• What are you most proud of? 

The best part of the garden is seeing how people interact with it. Looking down the steps, you’ve got celebrities having interviews, they’re eating bread, making bread, having a dip, having a drink, sitting, standing, walking around enjoying the beauty, but it works! Gardens are for people, they’re not just for shows. Within only four weeks this garden will be relocated to create a place of comfort and escape for the survivors of torture, who have come from the darkest places, and this garden will hopefully give them a light and they hope to continue their journey of recovery. 

• Where is the garden relocating to?  

The majority of the garden is going to go to freedom to torture headquarters – the only thing that won’t be relocated is the water feature simply due to the long-term maintenance costs not being appropriate for the charity to be expected to take on.  

We aim to open the relocated site on the 20th June, so the team are already at the headquarters preparing the site for our arrival following the end of Chelsea later this week.  

• What has been your favourite feedback so far?   

The best feedback you can have is hearing that it reminds people of home. And that can come from people from South Africa, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, the North Africa. And it’s a sense of feeling familiar and grounded in a place of happy memories and happier times, you know, myself having been born and bred in the United Kingdom, this is evocative of Mediterranean holidays with family and the smell of the bread that’s drifting through and some of the sense of the time and the wildlife loving it and soothing that you’ve just got down the time. And I think it’s people would say, what’s the words soothing, it’s relaxing, it’s peaceful, it’s a sanctuary. I mean, most gardens should hopefully offer that, but this is deliberately supposed to be a place to come and grow again.