Hampton Court Flower Show 2008

Inspiration for homes and gardens

Bringing the outside in, and the inside out

For 2008’s prestigious Hampton Court Flower Show, Holiday Inn teamed up with award-winning designer Sarah Eberle to create a show garden with a difference. The gold medal-winning IHG Weekend Breaks highlighted many simple but very effective ways to get more from the home-garden experience. It quite literally brought the outdoors inside, and took the inside out.

Like our hotels, IHG Weekend Breaks provided a warm, friendly and inviting environment for its many guests, while inspiring a fresh take on how to make the most of garden features and create versatile living space. It also encouraged visitors to explore and experiment with design – and showed how a garden can be so much more than, well, just a garden.

Here you can find out more about Sarah’s design concept, the materials she and the team used to create the IHG Weekend Breaks, and how – step by step – it all came together. And you can watch the show garden grow in just 50 seconds with our time-lapse video feature. There’s also more information on the Royal Horticultural Society’s horticultural events taking place all over the UK each year, and much more, in our Gardening Events section.

Meet Sarah Eberle

Sarah grew up in Devon and was educated at Dartington Hall School. Many say this explains a lot! A school that supported a liberal attitude to education and a great supporter of the arts and music, this environment allowed Sarah to develop a love of design and of the landscape.

Knowing where her passion lay she went on to study Landscape Architecture at Hammersmith Polytechnic (now a part of Greenwich University) and graduated in 1980. Putting aside a corporate career Sarah settled for self employment, working with other professionals in her spare time for the experience and knowledge.

Although working in Devon for many years Sarah moved to Hampshire in 1990 and has continued to base herself there ever since. Sarah spent some 8 years as design Director at Hillier Landscapes, of which she is still a share holder, but has now returned to freelance work in order to concentrate on what she likes best…personal attention to her schemes and a hands on artisan approach.

Sarah has been involved in the design and construction of show gardens since 1990. Currently she holds 8 RHS Gold Medals, Best in Show at Hampton Court and Chelsea, two George Cooke Medals for Design Innovation plus a scattering of Civic and other Design awards. Last year Sarah not only won Best in Show at Chelsea but also received the huge honour of an Honorary PHD in Design from Greenwich University and also took the British Association of Landscape Industries Grand Award.

Sarah’s design is the first private garden to receive this accolade in over ten years and beat all entries including International and Commercial schemes.Sarah has just returned form New Zealand where she designed and constructed a special show feature for the Ellerslie International Flower Show. Visit Sarah Eberle's website

Initial Plans

This section of IHG Weekend Breaks gives you the opportunity to view exclusive video footage of our award winning garden designer Sarah Eberle. By simply clicking on the video clips opposite you can see Sarah in the initial stages of this unique project, talking about why she was chosen by Holiday Inn and their overall vision for what is sure to be an outstanding show garden.

Make the most of IHG Weekend Breaks by simply clicking on the footage you wish to watch.

Find out why Sarah Eberle was selected to design the Holiday Inn garden, and what together they hope to achieve.

View footage of the Hampton Court Flower Show Press Conference.

Sourcing Materials

Months of preparation go into finding the right plants and materials that will bring the designer’s vision to life. Using the first sketches, watch our garden designer, Sarah Eberle, start to realise her vision by building scale models of the IHG Weekend Breaks show garden that illustrate the structure and perspective of the site.

You can also see how sympathetic colours and themes are chosen to compliment the planting choices so visitors can experience a seamless transition between the inside and outside spaces.

To realise her vision, Sarah Eberle creates a scale model of the Holiday Inn IHG Weekend Breaks. Watch the design process come to life as she shows the team how the garden will be framed within the beautiful setting of Hampton Court Palace.

Follow our garden designer, Sarah Eberle, on her journey around the UK to find the plants and materials for IHG Weekend Breaks that will create the visual impact she’s looking for.

Construction of the Show Garden

The Holiday Inn IHG Weekend Breaks will take 3 weeks to construct and involves a dedicated team of specialists, including our designer, Sarah Eberle, landscape gardeners, builders and horticulture experts.

Below you can see some images of the construction process in action and watch a specially made clip of the entire build condensed into a few seconds!

Once the Hampton Court Palace Show is over, the garden will be carefully dismantled and the site returned to its original state. Many elements of the garden are being replanted in other locations to minimise wastage.

Building a show garden at Hampton Court takes a dedicated team of contractors several weeks, but here you can watch it in seconds!

The IHG Weekend Breaks Show Garden

In our exclusive video footage of the gold award winning Holiday Inn IHG Weekend Breaks Show Garden, you will see how designer Sarah Eberle brought together exotic planting, unique features and innovative design to create a transitional space which brings the outdoors inside. The IHG Weekend Breaks provided a relaxing and inviting atmosphere for our guests at this year's prestigous Hampton Court Flower Show, so take a look at our footage and find out for yourself what the IHG Weekend Breaks has to offer.

Whether you're a novice or an expert, explore this site further to gather inspiration and tips for your own garden designs.

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