Leaking lock wins gold

THE garden featuring the leaking lock at the Chelsea Flower Show has won a gold medal.

The 'Yorkshire Garden', by designer Mark Gregory has been awarded gold in the Show Garden entry, Roger Fox reports.

Most ambitious

Mark tells that the lock, together with a lock keeper's house is the most ambitious he has attempted at the event.

But the illustration of it used by the Trust, showing both gates badly leaking and even water coming out of the walls reflects on the standard of maintenance, and with narrowboatworld revealing the designer lives just half a mile from the Aire & Calder, it is being taken as Mark's own view of the locks on the navigation.

A tough build

Of his win, Mark told the BBC One today:

"I think this is as much as you can possibly do in 18 days, when you are making it from scratch. It’s not been brought in in modules, everything has been built here. It was a tough build, a lot of fun, but I wouldn’t want to do anything more ambitious than this. Certainly from the engineering and logistics with getting all the components, we’ve gone very, very large."

Built by Mark's company Landform Consultants, this garden is a special one, featuring authentic Yorkshire stonework, trees local to the county, flowing water and genuine canal lock gates donated by Canal & River Trust.