Instagram star She Grows Veg recreates RHS Festival garden project at Perrywood in Sudbury in hope of inspiring community
With the popularity of gardening soaring due to the Covid-19 pandemic, a social media horticulture star has brought her edible garden showcase to Sudbury, in the hope of inspiring the community to create their own.
Lucy Hutchings – better known by her Instagram persona She Grows Veg, which has over 100,000 online followers – launched the re-creation of her Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) Hampton Court Garden Festival project at Perrywood garden centre on Thursday.
Inspired by her book Get Up and Grow, which was released in April, Lucy developed the project to encourage people to grow their own food, regardless of space or skill.
She told the Suffolk News: “I was really lucky to be invited by the RHS to do the project, which was wonderful, but I’m from Suffolk, and I really wanted the garden to live on after the show for people in my local area.
“There are a lot of ideas for people to take away. I wanted the opportunity to show how much you can do with a small space, and that you don’t have to choose between an ornamental or an edible garden – you can have both.
“The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. People say they’re really inspired by how to make the most of the space they have.
“I think there are a lot of people out there who care about food and have become far more aware of where it comes from and what impact it has on the planet.
“There’s already a wonderful community of gardeners but, with growing food, I think there are a lot of people who could find it a really rewarding thing to do.”
Perrywood, based in Newton Road in Sudbury, confirmed the garden is open for visitors to explore in the coming weeks.
Hannah Powell, communications director at Perrywood, added: “There are so many ideas for innovative ways to get growing, with the arch and vertical gardens proving particularly popular at the show and appearing on the BBC’s TV coverage several times.
“We hope the garden inspires people to recreate something similar in their own small spaces at home.”
Read more: All the latest news from Suffolk
Read more: All the latest news from Sudbury
