RHS Garden Plants Awareness for Denim’s Eco Impact
Jeans are ubiquitous, but consumers often don’t know much about how exactly their denim is made. An installation at the RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival 2021 this month used landscaping to make the impact of the fashion industry more visual and experiential.
The Fashion Footprint Garden, sponsored by Cone Denim, Endrime and Totally Buttons, included numerous touches that brought flowers and fashion together. The garden’s designer, Baz Grainger, worked in fashion for 25 years before branching out into landscape design and founding the consultancy The Landscape Tailor. His background in the apparel industry gave him a firsthand look at the pollution and harm caused to natural environments.
“The damage that the fashion industry is doing to the planet is on a scale that is just unbelievable,” Baz said.
For his first show garden, Baz pulled from his personal experience and his trips to Asia. To highlight the issue of water use, a sunken area of the garden includes two large barrels that hold about the amount of water needed to make a single pair of jeans. Bench seating includes an open grate that holds clothing, representing the textiles sent to landfills. Putting a fashion spin on gravel, buttons from recycled clothing were used as underfoot filler.
“The concept of the garden is really to raise awareness of the footprint that the fashion industry is leaving on the planet, and some of the steps we can take to help reduce that impact,” Baz explained.
For shade, a wooden frame and pergola have sheets of two different denim fabrics from Cone interlaced. The textiles were dyed using natural indigo to fit the plant theme. “I felt very strongly about using natural dye on the fabric,” Baz explained. To help with the dyeing and incorporation of the fabrics, Baz called on Endrime’s Mohsin Sajid.
All of the flowers in the garden can also be used as textile dyes. The plants featured include bronze fennel, achillea, echinaceas and red basil.
At the show, up from July 5 to 11, The Fashion Footprint Garden won a Silver Medal, and was awarded the Best Global Impact Garden in 2021.
The garden has been relocated to Greenfingers Charity, a children’s hospice. According to Greenfingers the garden is being redesigned to fit their space and the water tanks will become planters so that sick children can enjoy planting on their own.
Watch the video below to learn more about the garden.
All photos by Sadia Rafique, co-owner and art director of Endrime.