Birmingham wins sixth Chelsea gold with Rowland Emett display

Birmingham City Council has won a gold medal at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show for the sixth year in a row, with a display inspired by the work of the cartoonist and inventor Rowland Emett.

The display, in the floral category, is called A Quiet Afternoon in the Cloud Cuckoo Valley, and brings Emett's whimsical machines to life with plants, moving parts and running water.

A train above the flowers

The ten metre by ten metre island display in the Floral Marquee features two of Emett's works. The first is a bather diving into a pool from a bathing hut. The second is his locomotive Wild Goose, which runs as a working train with carriages.

The train travels on a track three metres above the floor, running over a floral tunnel that crosses the display. The entrance to the tunnel has been planted to look like a railway tunnel and shows pictures of Birmingham.

One side of the display is an ivy wall of metal and wicker cogs and gears. In the middle, a water feature lifts buckets of water up to a river, which then tumbles as a waterfall on to the perspex roof of the tunnel before flowing through planted valleys to a beach, with a diver and bathing hut. Wicker animals add movement to the planting.

A Birmingham story

Rowland Emett was born in north London in 1906 and moved to Small Heath at the start of the First World War. He went to Waverley Grammar School and studied at the city's School of Art, then known as the Central School of Arts and Crafts. He later worked as a process engraver in Birmingham before finding fame as a cartoonist and as the creator of extraordinary mechanical machines designed to amuse and delight.

The council thanked the Rowland Emett Society for helping to celebrate "another wonderfully creative artist taught in Birmingham", and paid tribute to the team who had worked so hard to bring Emett's work to life through plants.

Paid for by sponsors

The display, and all the plants and moving features within it, has been paid for by sponsors, including Greenspace Leisure, the Rowland Emett Society, Veolia, Akamba Heritage Centre, Pentland Plants and Certis, as well as individuals who bought panels.

The Chelsea Flower Show is the most famous event in the gardening calendar, and a gold medal there is one of the highest honours in horticulture. For a city council to win gold six years running is a remarkable record, and it has helped to build Birmingham's reputation as a city of parks and gardens.

The success comes as the council's parks team prepares for the summer season, when the city's green spaces are at their busiest. The Chelsea displays have become a showcase for the skills of the city's gardeners, and for the stories of the people and places that have shaped Birmingham.

Emett's own machines, with their mix of engineering and fantasy, have delighted audiences for decades, and the display gives a new generation the chance to discover an artist whose imagination was shaped by his years in Small Heath.