A little bit of Shropshire has been lovingly recreated at Chelsea Flower Show as the highlight of a year of activities to celebrate the achievements of Thomas Telford, the father of civil engineering.
Scores of people from council workers to agricultural students have been beavering away for months on a display garden.
Their efforts will not only wow the crowds when the world’s greatest flower show opens to the general public on Thursday, but will also put the fast-growing town of Telford on the international stage, helping to attract tourists and business to the borough.
The Thomas Telford Toll House Garden marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of the great man, with the Shropshire celebrations led by a committee fronted by Lord Grocott.
Son of a Scottish shepherd, Thomas Telford was apprenticed to a stonemason at the age of 14 and found fame as a builder and architect of churches, canals, aqueducts and bridges.
Dubbed the ‘Colossus of Roads’, he was the first president of the Institution of Civil Engineers and the first county surveyor for Shropshire.
He built the world’s first cast-iron aqueduct at Longdon-on-Tern, the Menai Suspension Bridge to Anglesey, the spectacular Pontcysyllte Aqueduct on the Ellesmere Canal and St Katherine’s Docks in London.
Probably his greatest legacy to Shropshire was the construction of the London-to-Holyhead Road with its innovative toll houses. It was reckoned to be the finest road in the whole of Europe.
Telford’s toll houses, built between 1817 and 1832, are the inspiration for the Chelsea garden which has been masterminded by urban designer and landscape architect Michael Vout and horticulturalist Chris Jones, both employed by Telford & Wrekin Council.
A toll house, made of wood and fibreglass at the Ironbridge Gorge Museums, forms the centrepiece of the Chelsea display, with a toll gate, highway and flower-and-vegetable garden.
Plants, stone, tiles and other items have been supplied by Harper Adams University College, Newport; British Wild Flower Plants, Norfolk; P&W Maintenance Contracting Ltd, Oswestry; Telford & Wrekin Services Ltd; Dingle Nurseries, Welshpool; Banbury Innovations - GRP Products; Craven Dunnill Jackfield Ltd, Ironbridge; and Shropshire Stone & Granite Ltd, Baschurch.
Welcoming visitors to the garden is Traci Dix-Williams, dressed in period costume, who has plenty of stories to tell about the life and times of a toll house keeper’s wife in the 1800s.
In their description of the garden, the designers say: “The toll house was intended to house someone who was trustworthy and had some degree of academic ability, due to the fact they were responsible for collecting and managing money.
“The toll house was a home and a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week workplace for the toll keeper, so a great deal of time was invested in the garden.
“We see the elements of gardening as a hobby and for leisure and pleasure as well as practical gardening to supply fresh foodstuffs and medicinal items.
“As the toll keeper was a well educated man who could read and write he would have been able to make good use of the gardening books and magazines which were becoming increasingly available and popular during the Victorian era.”
The display also features foxgloves and foxglove tiles in honour of Wellington’s Dr William Withering (1741-99), a pioneer in the treatment of heart conditions.
He was inspired by a Shropshire gipsy who made medicines for dropsy from the seeds and dried leaves of foxgloves (digitalis) she harvested from The Wrekin.
She sold these in Wellington Market, virtually next door to where the young Withering was serving his apprenticeship with his father as an apothecary.
Withering later did extensive work into the properties of foxgloves - the result being a heart medication, now known as dioxin, which has given quality of life to thousands of people over the last 200 years.
It is hoped eventually to rebuild the show garden as a permanent feature in Telford.
* The Chelsea Flower Show is open to RHS members tomorrow and Wednesday, and to the general public from Thursday to Saturday. Tickets are sold out.
By Peter Johnson
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