Reading designers feature at Daily Mail Ideal Home Show (14 March - 6 April)

Reading-based sustainable garden specialists, Sector39, have designed a garden to complement one the main exhibits at of this year’s Ideal Home Show – the Eco House. The house is designed by John Prewer, one of the country’s leading eco-architects. It is a single-storey family home and includes a kitchen, a dining and sitting room, three bedrooms and two en-suite bathrooms. The design can be split into two separate homes, making it affordable for first time buyers or for families. The house can be constructed and ready to move into in just five days. Insulation is provided by natural materials, like sheep and hemp wool and a green roof which can be used as an aerial allotment. Photo-voltaic roof panels provide electricity and solar water panels create hot water. A central courtyard encloses a solar heated pool in which edible fish (tilapia) can be produced. The house is raised above the ground which offers protection against flooding and space to store harvested rainwater.

The Carbon Free Group, the team behind the house, invited Steve Jones and Dave Richards of Sector39 to design a garden which would extend the sustainable principles of the house to its garden.

Dave Richards said, “the Eco house is a great opportunity to introduce sustainable living to a wider public. We operate on the principle that gardens can be beautiful and also contribute to the long-term future of the planet. Many gardens have a negative impact on the environment and add to our carbon footprint. Just think of all the chemicals, peat and energy needed to produce bedding plants in greenhouses and then transport them around the country. Then there’s all the purified drinking water used to keep them alive during the summer – hosepipe bans allowing! Don’t forget all the energy used in hard landscaping – to make cement or imported paving stone from India or China. Using the principles of permaculture design, we create gardens which help our clients reduce their carbon footprint and live more sustainable lifestyles”.

Sector39’s designs are modelled on the edible forest garden – food-producing, low maintenance, no-dig – based on a natural woodland ecosystem. A combination of perennial plants, shrubs, trees and climbers creates a multi-layered garden which requires little pruning and lots of harvesting from spring through to autumn. More conventional vegetable plots can also be incorporated.

Steve was a consultant on Channel 4’s recently broadcast documentary, Dumped. “Living on a landfill for three weeks really brings home the amount of stuff we throw away. The crazy thing is how much of it is useful. We re-use someone else’s waste for our hard landscaping – materials which are reclaimed, such as brick and stone, or reused water butts made from fruit juice concentrate containers. We source local renewable materials such as fencing made from coppiced hazel, and have found a fantastic timber yard in Hurst, Trees2Timber. Richard Maynard makes garden structures from English oak with slight blemishes, which means it has little commercial value and is usually sold for firewood.”

Water harvesting and conservation is a key part of Sector39’s designs. Dave believes that, “with droughts set to become a regular feature of our weather, we have got to use every drop of water which falls on a house and its garden. The ideal is to disconnect yourself from the stormwater drains, collect enough water to irrigate the garden and flush the loo, use the rest in water features and anything that’s left over can soak into the water table in a specially planted ‘rain garden’. Last years floods have clearly demonstrated that covering our towns with tarmac and concrete has a price. Your garden is part of the solution.”

The garden at the Ideal Home Show also incorporates a vegetable plot which not only produces healthy fresh food which saves on food miles, but also consumes all the organic waste produced in the house. Steve adds, “the Show presented us with a real problem – very little is growing in March… so we’ve created a plot which looks like it’s just been planted, and hopefully some of the seeds we’ve planted will begin to sprout during the Show.

We hope that our design for the Ideal Home Show will show how a garden is a key part of reducing our environmental impact – everyone can do it, and it needn’t cost the earth!”

The Show will be opened by the Eden Project’s Tim Smit on 14 March at 10am.

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Photos of the garden in situ at Earl’s Court available from 14 March.

Further information from Dave Richards: dave@sector39.co.uk; 0794 705 7468;