Skip Header Navigation

About RBC > Community & Sustainability > News >Award winning RBC garden explores the potential of 'skyrise greening'

Award winning RBC garden explores the potential of 'skyrise greening'

May 23, 2013 - A garden sponsored by RBC has won a gold medal at one of the world's most prestigious flower shows. The RBC Blue Water Roof Garden, co-sponsored by the RBC Blue Water Project, RBC Wealth Management and RBC Capital Markets was featured at the Royal Horticultural Society's (RHS) Chelsea Flower Show, in London, UK.

The RBC Blue Water Roof Garden is an exciting vision of an urban rooftop garden that integrates recreational space with innovative biodiversity and habitat features. The garden explores the potential of ‘skyrise greening,’ bringing trees, meadows and wetlands into the heart of the densest of cities, while addressing the important issue of urban water management.

Professor Nigel Dunnett shows off the gold medal for the RBC Blue Water Roof Garden, co-sponsored by the RBC Blue Water Project, RBC Wealth Management and RBC Capital Markets.

Professor Nigel Dunnett shows off the gold medal for the RBC Blue Water Roof Garden, co-sponsored by the RBC Blue Water Project, RBC Wealth Management and RBC Capital Markets.

For the third successive year RBC has collaborated with Professor Nigel Dunnett, who was the lead horticultural and planting design consultant for the London 2012 Olympic Park, and The Landscape Agency, to present a garden that is both beautiful and provides innovative solutions to important urban issues.

The garden featured a central wetland, which captured rainwater run-off, and a winding boardwalk that lead to a dramatic ‘bird hide’ clad in habitat panels. Low-tech living walls which require no irrigation helped enclose the space, and the whole garden was filled with flower-rich planting.

The RHS Chelsea Flower Show, now in its 100th year, attracts over 157,000 visitors each year including senior members of the British Royal Family, who attend as part of their patronage of the RHS. The Show also attracts international media attention, helping to raise the profile of RBC and the RBC Blue Water Project™ both in the UK and abroad.

Following the show, the garden will be relocated to the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary in Scotland, UK, where it will form a core element of the hospital's new Therapeutic Roof Garden development. The facility is designed to allow patients - whether walking, in a wheelchair or bed-bound - access to green space to aid their recovery. It will be located at the heart of the hospital, on the roof above the entrance to a new block housing the Emergency Department and inpatient wards.

Separately, the garden's timber building will be auctioned in July at a client event in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, in support of RBC Race for the Kids.