A fallen beech tree makes up the panelled interior to our retreat at the 2024 Chelsea Flower Show. The show garden by Tom Stuart-Smith celebrates the National Garden Scheme and was sponsored by Project Giving Back.

With a woodland edge theme, a drift of gentle underplanting is laid out through a hazel coppice and is designed to give a sense of calm and a connection to nature.

The retreat for volunteers, visitors and patients is a inviting, humane and informal space for gathering, cooking and gardening. Externally the building is clad in cleft oak, which is split by hand. Across the project the joy of making by hand is present, with stoneware gutters and downpipes thrown by the potter Robert Silver and bespoke door and shutter handles and latches by Fenton Scott-Fielder.

Following the show, the retreat will be relocated to Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, to become part of the garden of a new Moggie’s Centre for people undergoing cancer treatment.