The Poisonous Pawtanical Garden

So Thursday was a perfectly gorgeous sunny day, the ideal day for a little spontaneous trip to London, which is exactly what I did with a visit to The Poisonous Pawtanical Garden situated in the very lovely Horniman Museum and Gardens.

The Horniman Museum and gardens is incredibly beautiful, I can't believe I didn't know about it before, its wonderfully tranquil and peaceful and the perfect place to spend a sunny afternoon. I'm definitely going to come back and take the children (with a heaving picnic basket to boot).

The Poisonous Pawtanical garden is a stunning show garden created by the insurers MORE TH>N  to highlight the toxicity of everyday garden plants.  Apparently one in three pet owners admit they have no idea whether the plants and flowers in their own garden are toxic.

And the insurers are calling for all producers and manufacturers to provide clear labelling on the toxicity for cats and dogs. Something I hadn't ever really considered before, but such a great campaign. The garden also indicated some plants which can be harmful to humans too, which was really interesting to know given my 18th month old baby still puts nearly everything in her mouth! We don't have pets, but our neighbours do and I think its something really important to be aware of.

The garden grabs your attention with its vibrant colours and joyful plant placement. The graphics were perfect too, and worked really well in conveying the gardens message. I loved the juxtaposition of the gorgeous striped green and white fence with the lushness of the foliage and flowers.

What shocked me most was how common all the flowers and plants in the garden were. As soon as I entered I could spot at least half a dozen of the plants which we have in our garden. Tomatoes, peonies, lilies and many other varieties of common plants were all here. It is pretty shocking, and I think that the garden is a fantastic way to make people remember the risks. Realistically I know that I won't be uprooting all the plants that I saw in the garden from ours, however, I am aware and now know to try and teach any dogs/cats to not eat any of these particular plants (will also mean no more dog eared plants!) and I will be very careful to check any new plant varieties and their risks when planting new ones.

The garden was designed in collaboration with More than, veterinarian Robert White - Adams, 2015 RHS Chelsea gold winning garden designer Ian Drummond (who I met at the amazing #opengreenhouse event recently) and campaign ambassador TV's Charlie Dimmock.

I was really lucky to be able to meet Charlie at the launch an ask her a few questions about the garden, she said:

The MORE TH>N Poisonous Pawtanical Garden isn’t about telling pet owners to go around uprooting their flower beds - it’s a way to help them make more informed choices when they design their gardens or buy new plants for their home as well as being more aware of the garden plants they already have.

There are many plants and flowers out there that aren’t toxic to pets and we’ll be offering visitors to the garden information and advice on safe plants for pets. With this advice we can hopefully reduce the number of pets that are accidently poisoned while keeping Britain’s gardens colourful and interesting.”

While I had the opportunity I thought I'd also ask Charlie a couple of Flowers in the Window style questions! I explained about being a textile designer and how being the garden and plants/flowers really inspire my designs and I wanted to know if gardening and flowers inspired her to do anything non garden related.

'Like you, if you see some of the combinations of plants and flowers, the colour combinations work very well in the house. If you're not 100% about what colours go with what, if you go and look at flowers, often you'll see that a particular pink and yellow might go work really well together, and that might not normally be a colour combination that you would associate, but that go really well together. Also textures, like leaf textures, can help you arrange things to contrast, like when you see in the garden a really crinkly leaf against something very smooth, if you do that with fabric, it can make a lovely feature with cushions or something.'

As our blog name is flowers in the window, I also wanted to ask what Charlie's favourite flower is - although granted she said that this was almost impossible! So I then asked what her favourite common flower is (as these always hold a special place for me).

'I have to say, I do like what I call hardy annuals, for many reasons, they're great for bees and butterflies, they're colourful, you can sow them directly into the ground, so children like to sow them, you put them in, they grow up and they flower. So that includes, things like sunflowers and poppies, cornflowers, all those that I would call wild flowers, children's flowers dare I say, but they're not, they're really colourful.'

I just love her answer here, I was so pleased to hear about her love of wild and easy growing flowers. Just beautiful.

The garden is open until 14th June and is well worth a visit. To find a detailed list of the plants and further information look here.