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Contact your ministerForgotten Forests garden lives on at Hawthorn Primary School
Lead policy advocate
The 2026 RHS Chelsea Flower Show may be over, but our gold medal-winning Forgotten Forests garden will live on at a Newcastle primary school. Our showpiece has been transported to the North East, dry stone walls and all, where it has become an outdoor classroom, a sanctuary for people and wildlife and a permanent reminder of our precious ancient woodland.
At the world-famous flower show, our garden displayed the beauty and value of Britain’s ancient woods. Created by award-winning designer Ashleigh Aylett, the immersive woodland glade was full of texture, diversity and life, with drifts of vibrant native wildflowers, ferns and grasses typical of a healthy ancient wood.
This thriving habitat was contrasted starkly with shady non-native conifers that represented a dense timber plantation. It was a powerful demonstration of the crisis that faces many of our ancient woods today, with almost 40% of them hidden beneath conifer plantations. But the garden showed the potential to rescue them and return them to their former glory if we act now.
Judges were impressed, presenting the garden a RHS gold medal and the Best All About Plants Garden award. Our garden was made possible by our sponsor, Project Giving Back, with additional support from Lloyds Banking Group.
Read more on the garden's appearance at Chelsea
A new lease of life
In June 2026, the plants and landscaping materials of the garden were moved to Hawthorn Primary School in Newcastle’s West End.
Alongside designer Ashleigh, students, staff and volunteers got stuck in to reassemble the garden, cleverly reimagined in a more classroom-friendly layout. In its new home, the garden will be a calming, immersive space that continues to educate, inspire and be enjoyed long after the show. The school was chosen for two reasons.
Budding naturalists
Hawthorn Primary School is dedicated to connecting pupils with nature. It has a strong belief in learning from the outside environment to help with concentration and personal development. Students can join nature, gardening and eco warrior clubs, and they’ve achieved the prestigious platinum level with our popular Green Tree Schools Award.
The Forgotten Forests garden will help deepen their connection with nature and continue all this fantastic work, from science and technology lessons to story writing and minibeast hunts, as well as supporting children’s physical and mental wellbeing for years to come.
The project has been a very positive and worthwhile experience for our school and wider community. It's supported outdoor learning, strengthened community pride and created something that our children can explore, observe, learn in a hands-on way and enjoy for years to come.
Headteacher
More access to the benefits of trees
The school is in a neighbourhood where tree canopy cover is low. That means the local community may not have as much access to trees and the many benefits they provide, like shelter from extreme weather and reduced air and noise pollution.
This pocket of new green space gives local children a taster of the glory of ancient woodland, with hazel, field maple, guelder rose and other trees underplanted with red campion, water avens, cow parsley and more. We hope the growth through the seasons and the changing colours, shapes, textures and smells will inspire future generations to care about the woods, trees and wildlife we all need to thrive.
See the garden in its new home
Find out more about the relocation process and what students and staff think of their new garden.
Rebecca: So where we are now is Hawthorn School in Newcastle. And this is where we've relocated our garden. This school is actively engaging the children in outdoors education. So the children are going to help us plant the garden. They're going to come out in groups, help plant, create that sense of ownership over the garden. This school sits in an area that the Woodland Trust has identified as a priority for bringing more tree cover. So the community around the school don't necessarily have fair access to trees and the benefits they bring. So it's really important for us to get more trees into this neighbourhood. The children can learn about trees and can develop that relationship with them from an early age.
Ashleigh: It's really nice to actually see the garden relocated and the children planting all the plants and already really enjoying it. We were so lucky that actually the whole of the garden was relocated here to the school, so to see it in its whole and being enjoyed, and all the volunteers being here helping plant it and seeing it all come together. Yeah, it's been a wonderful day.
Emily: It's a privilege to be here as the ambassador for Lloyds Banking Group. So this morning I've been talking to the teachers, the governors and some of the children, and it's really plain to see how beautiful this garden is and how brilliantly it fits into the forest school and how people will be able to enjoy it for years to come.
Student 1: I really like it because there's lots of green and green is my favourite colour. I love nature. Any chance you give me to go out in nature, I'll take it, even if I'm doing one of my favourite hobbies like...
Student 2: Gardening and stuff like that.
Student 3: It's really special to Hawthorn because we have all this nature around us. We have our own forests and we're very lucky to have this nature around us.
Student 4: I think one of the first things I'm going to do as soon as this garden opens is look at every single different plant and choose my favourite one.
Student 5: My favourite part of the garden is this plant because I really like the colour white that the plant uses. And it's quite tall and represents the summer.
Student 2: We love the fern plants. We literally gave them names.
Student 1: Yeah, ferns are just too good.
Student 6: It's very colourful and bright. And it's not just one colour. It has a lighter pink in the middle.
Student 7: I like the five senses of it. I like what you can feel on the plants, I like the way they smell, how they look, and I love the sound of them.
Student 8: If you walk around the school and look around, you can see it from very far away because of all the trees and it's just really nice to look at and sit around.
Jane: So the area that it's in is actually used for the children at breaks and lunchtimes when they're outside, but it's also used for learning times. Ashleigh came and visited the school and we talked about what we wanted for it. So she's developed seating areas so that the children can sit and be calm and quiet. A lot of our children don't have gardens at home, so to be able to garden and plant here is really important. The whole school community loves our garden and our grounds.
Rebecca: Chelsea was amazing. It's such a fun week. Just inspiring to be there, surrounded by all of the other gardens and people that were talking about such amazing causes. We had such a good time talking to all the visitors about the Woodland Trust, about our work, and about the importance of woodlands too. For the Woodland Trust, it was just a fantastic platform for bringing our cause to a global audience. Talking about ancient woodland, why it's irreplaceable and what we're trying to do now to save a lot of the ancient woodland in Britain. There’s no other platform like it. It was such a great opportunity.
Ashleigh: It was an incredible experience. It was just really nice to see people interested in the campaign, getting behind it, enjoying the planting, and asking how they can put these native plants in their own gardens. It was just really nice to see everyone come together and get behind the garden. I think it's really important that kids experience being outside and getting hands-on with plants really early on, and this garden gives them that experience.
Rebecca: It's important for children to develop a connection to nature and the natural world from an early age because as they develop into adulthood and later in life it means they maintain that connection which is very good for mental health, for physical wellbeing and to be out and about in the natural world. But it's also important because that generates the enthusiasm for it and that generates people that care, people that care about our natural world, people that want to protect and preserve it, and ensure that it is still here for generations to come.
The garden’s crucial message
The trees and plants may have become an open-air classroom, but this permanent illustration of ancient woodland continues to tell the same important story. It represents an ancient woodland brought back from the brink. These rich, diverse habitats have lived for centuries, but they are fragile and we have alarmingly few left. Remnants of those chopped down and densely replanted for timber still cling on: these are our Forgotten Forests.
Many of these plantations are now ready to fell and harvest, giving us one last chance to save the valuable ancient woods beneath them. At the Chelsea Flower Show and now at Hawthorn Primary School, the garden showcases how these buried ancient woods can be nursed back to health, and you can help make sure it happens.
Urge your government to remember our Forgotten Forests before it’s too late, for nature, people and climate.