RHS Urban Show opens this week

The Royal Horticultural Society’s first ever large-scale indoor gardening show opens this week featuring a pair of robotic detection dogs scrambling across a show garden and an indoor Urban Forest amid cutting-edge designs and inspirational ideas for the nation’s newest gardeners.

The dogs have been adapted with scanners by the University of Plymouth and designer Kenny Wilding-Raybould of the Grown That Way collective as part of their exhibit, The Wider Web, which uses agri-tech as robots, sensors and automation to extract data from the soil and use it to increase biodiversity to make an area more productive.

Low-lying data collected by Ellie the Robot Dog and her sidekick, Elmo, will be fed back into a “living lab” which will crunch the numbers to reveal a picture of the soil. The Wider Web will also demonstrate how hydroponics can adapt any enclosed space, such as a disused shed, into a light and water-fed growing system, and how drone imagery can also feed information back to enable better use of diminishing land.

Other exhibits to feature at the four-day event at the Depot Mayfield, 11 Baring St, Manchester M1 2PY, opening on Thursday 18 April until Sunday 21 April, include an indoor Urban Forest designed by last year’s RHS Young Designer of the Year Nathan Webster, while renowned musician Tinie Tempah joins Chase Distillery at their ‘Forage Your Own Garnish’ bar alongside award-winning designer Tom Massey.

RHS Urban Forest, set to be one of the UK’s largest indoor forests with a footprint of 286 sq m, and a height of 6m, has been inspired by Britain’s forests and the atmosphere and sense of theatre people feel when in these locations. Featuring 23 trees, including Pinus sylvestris and Betula nigra, it aims to highlight the importance of urban foresting for mental and environmental health, and the importance of retaining existing forests and protecting their future.

Jack Hodgson will showcase his Mushroom and Microgreen Growtainer demonstrating how space, or lack of, is no barrier to growing your own superfoods in anything from milk cartons to buckets thrown away by local cafes. Grown together, microgreens and mushrooms utilise their symbiotic relationship to aid each other’s growth.

Manchester Urban Diggers will present Logarithm, a spiral garden inspired by the recurrence of the golden ratio in natural shapes filled with edible plants designed to maximise growing within the smallest of spaces and built from found and foraged materials, while visitors can learn creative and DIY solutions to capturing rainwater around their homes thanks to Leon Davis’ Rainwater Capture Cube.

In the Green Gallery, the Kissing the Eaves exhibition of visual art invites viewers into three very different rooms offering artwork and ideas, lichen, moss and fungus as art exhibits, and presents a journey through Manchester’s post-industrial landscape.

Born from the Herefordshire countryside with flavours inspired by the wild, Chase Distillery will be the ‘official gin and vodka’ of RHS Urban Show, as part of their ambition to bring a slice of the countryside into urban areas. Tempah said: “Nature has always been a muse of mine when it comes to creating, and through our collaboration with Chase Distillery and the RHS Urban Show, we’re encouraging everyone to tap into their creativity and embrace the beauty of the natural world and everything it has to offer.”

Lex Falleyn, show manager for the RHS Urban Show, said: “RHS Urban Show is a chance for a new audience to gain new roots, or grow their existing knowledge on ways to enjoy horticulture in the city.  From indoor plants and balconies on a budget, to botanical art to inspirational talks — we hope this show will encourage visitors to grow in their own way. If visitors have limited space, then there’s opportunities to learn about cutting edge horticultural technology, plant based careers and community gardening through displays and talks.”

Tickets can be purchased at: https://www.rhs.org.uk/shows-events/rhs-urban-show