Eyewitness - 12 March 2010
Gardens and plays
The Quaker Meeting Place Garden at the Malvern Spring Gardening Show A small corner of the Three Counties Showground in the shadow of the Malvern Hills is not usually the place you would expect to find a Quaker Meeting. However, for four days at the beginning of May that is exactly what it will be as Matthew Jackman and his company, Topiarus horticulture Ltd, add the finishing touches to ‘The Quaker Meeting Place Garden’ at the Malvern Spring Gardening Show. Inspired after seeing a Quaker outreach advert in one of the national newspapers, Matthew decided that designing and creating a show garden would be a wonderful opportunity for outreach to a wide and diverse audience at Malvern. Matthew, who was bought up in a Quaker family from Reading, and attended Leighton Park School throughout his secondary education, achieved a RHS Silver Medal for his first show garden at Malvern in 2009, and felt that this would be a chance to give something back to Quakerism, which has had such a positive influence on his life.
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