ATC Wins Bronze Medal At Chelsea Flower Show 2008
The best garden designers, plantsmen and plantswomen from the world’s most celebrated growers come together annually to create the most famous flower show in the world – The RHS Chelsea Flower Show. It is a truly Enchanted Garden, breathtakingly beautiful, full of vibrant colours and sweet aromas that disappears after only six days.
The ATC was therefore delighted that its proposal for an educational stand in the Continuous Learning area at this year’s Show was accepted by the RHS against stiff competition (34 applications for only 16 stands). The ATC’s exhibit told the story of essential oils and their use, both historically and currently, focusing on the Show’s topics for this year of world-wide plant conservation, plants and human well-being and plant selection with climate change in mind.
The presentation consisted of a colourful poster format arranged around a central display of essential oil bearing plants with bottles of their extracted essential oils supplied by leading brands. This provided a rare opportunity for visitors to experience the tactile nature of these plants and smell the essential oil within it whilst comparing it to the actual extracted essential oil.
ATC members provided a display of typical aromatherapy products – including those especially suitable for gardeners – and an ATC member/formulator specialising in signature perfumes created four Chelsea Perfume Blends made entirely from pure essential oils.
The ATC’s stand was a huge success! During the week thousands of visitors took the opportunity to discover more about the relationship between aromatherapy, agriculture and conservation. It was so rewarding to find that visitors immediately made the connection between our stand and the objectives of the Show and many thanked us for being there. They were enthralled by the information on our posters; the people involved in growing the plants and how it affects their livelihoods; the need for sustainable harvesting to ensure plant species survive and how essential oils are obtained and used. Many had never seen raw frankincense and myrrh or smelled the resultant distilled essential oil and teachers were keen to share this knowledge with their pupils.
This made all the hard work truly worthwhile and has raised awareness not only of the work of the ATC and its members, but also provided visitors with valuable knowledge of the art and science of aromatherapy. More importantly, their awareness of the vital need to obtain essential oils from ethical and sustainable sources was significantly raised – and this was exactly our intention’.
The ATC would like to thank our sponsors for their support. Our beautiful posters were designed by Sam Dabbs-Cotton of Studio 74 Creative Design for a nominal sum, they were printed by Base Formula at cost and the main plant display was provided by Neal’s Yard Remedies.
