Navan man's garden makes history at RHS Hampton Court Palace Show

A Navan-born architect has made RHS history after winning an unprecedented five major awards at the RHS Hampton Court Palace Show for his show garden inspired by the Irish and UK Temperate Rainforest.

Mike McMahon, originally from Athlumney, and wife Jewlsy Mathews swept the boards with their 'Suburu Cocoon' garden at the prestigious garden festival which takes place in London this week.

The garden won an RHS gold medal as well as the Tudor Rose Award, Best Show Garden, Best Construction, and the Environmental Innovation Award.

The Tudor Rose Award- the most prestigious accolade at RHS Hampton Court- is not presented every year and is reserved for gardens of truly exceptional quality.

Mike and Jewlsy are co-founders of Mike McMahon Studios and were selected to create a show garden at the festival on the back of their gold medal success at the Chelsea Flower Show last year for a balcony garden they designed and constructed themselves.

A delighted Mike told the Meath Chronicle that they were shocked and delighted to win not just a gold medal at Hampton Court this year but four other awards including the coveted Tudor Rose Award only handed out every couple of years for gardens that excel.

"We are so delighted. Last year when we spoke we had won gold at Chelsea and we were in shock then and we are equally as shocked this time around. It is only our second garden ever at these shows. It's like every time we do a garden at these shows it just absolutely explodes.

"When we had feedback from the judges, one of the judges who has been doing it for years said she count on one one hand the amount of times someone has got as high a score as we did for our garden. The four awards we got, no one in the history of the show has got all these awards together.

"The Tudor rose award, it kind of is a measure of excellence, they might not hand it out for a couple of years but if a garden scores really high score or they think its eally unusual or innovative garden, they award it."

Mike admitted he didn't even know the Tudor Rose award existed. "I had never seen it before, it comes out so seldom," he said.

Sustainability and use of recycled materials are at the heart of Mike and Jewlsy's design which reimagines the traditional walled garden as a sensory sanctuary of transformation and stillness. A sculptural perforated brick wall crafted from 4,500 Kenoteq K-Briqs- the world’s most sustainable brick- and drawing on traditions of South Indian architecture filters views into a lush interior which aims to highlight the disappearing temperate rainforests of Britain and Irealnd and the important need for preservation of these beautiful landscapes.

Once covering up to 20 per cent of Britain and Ireland, these rare ecosystems—rich in mosses, lichens, and epiphytes—have now dwindled to less than one per cent due to deforestation, air pollution, and invasive species.

Now among the most threatened habitats in the UK, their decline has gone largely unnoticed and with the Subaru Cocoon, Mike and Jewlsy wanted to bring this quiet crisis into view, offering a space of ecological memory and hopeful renewal.

The couple thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience of building the garden also. While they did a lot of the work themselves for their Chelsea garden last year, this year they had a much bigger team with five to six contractors as well as seven to eight people planting.

Mike told how they had thousands of plants growing in a nursery from January and bringing it all together on site in under three weeks was "like a military operation".

The judges were really impressed by the planting and Mike told them neither himself or Jewlsy had a qualification in horticulture or gardening.

Still pinching themselves after winning no less than five awards, they have already been invited to do another garden at Hampton Palace next year.

"We are so delighted. It is also brilliant to be representing Navan and Meath at a show like this. I am the only person from Ireland in it, so its brilliant for someone in Ireland to get best in show."

Mike is a son of Mary and Michael McMahon from Athlumney and has been living in London since 2007. He opened his own architect's practice 'Mike McMahon Studio' with his wife Jewlsy in 2022. With a broad scope spanning architecture, interiors, landscapes, and furniture, the studio undertakes projects ranging from large-scale office developments to intimate garden spaces.

The Suburu Cocoon garden will feature on BBC 2's Gardener's World programme this evening (Friday) at 8pm.