Multiple award-winning international garden key feature at Ellerslie
Friday 21 November 2008, 7:57AM
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Multiple gold award-winning Singapore garden designer Peter Cheok will recreate his Singapore Garden Festival Best of Show and Gold Award winning Seeking Shangri-La garden at next year’s Ellerslie International Flower Show.
A key feature of the Show, Seeking Shangri-La is a fantasy garden which Ellerslie International Flower Show Exhibition Manager Kate Hillier says will be a real showstopper.
“The garden has a real wow factor; it is both theatrical and at the same time horticulturally challenging.”
She says Peter Cheok has quickly established himself as a leading garden designer in Asia and his reputation is beginning to spread internationally.
“He has a real talent for creating true fantasy gardens which portray a serious environmental message.”
Seeking Shangri-La highlights the issues of global warming and climate change, the theme for the garden coming from the fictional place of Shangri-La created by British author James Hilton in the 1933 novel Lost Horizon.
The garden illustrates the dramatic impact global warming can have on the environment and how nature will need to adapt to climate change. It uses an artistic combination of lighting and special effects to create a city submerged underwater, beneath a retreating glacier.
Only 28 years, Peter is the youngest of three brothers who started Far East Flora, Singapore’s leading integrated floriculture company. The company combines a retail nursery, wholesale flower centre, landscaping and garden care.
He has received numerous international accolades for his work, including winning the Singapore Garden Festival’s Best of Show and Gold Awards for the last two consecutive shows.
Peter’s team of designers were in Christchurch last month to scope out the site for the exhibition garden, talk with the project team and source plants for their exhibit.
Ellerslie will be the first time Peter Cheok has exhibited internationally and says he is honoured to have been invited to exhibit at the prestigious garden show.