Top marks for gardening business with RHS Chelsea success

Humble-Bee Gardeners, based in Brimfield, near Leominster, was founded in by Frantisek Zika and Jenny Rafferty and offers a garden design, maintenance and landscaping service with core principles of sustainability, biodiversity and regeneration at the fore.

Its sister company, Humble-Bee Landscaping & Construction Ltd, promises high-quality garden builds.

Sister company Humble-Bee Landscaping & Construction Ltd offers garden builds (Image: Humble-Bee Gardeners)

Over the last couple of years, the business has expanded to become involved in several RHS flower shows, kicking off with a collaboration for charity Bees for Development at Malvern Flower Show in 2023.

"The garden was all about bees and sustainability, which is at the heart of our business, and was awarded a gold medal award," the Humble-Bee founders said.

"It set us up well to consider our next foray into the show world."

This year the company was invited to take part in the world-famous Chelsea Flower Show, growing all the perennials for garden designer Jamie Langlands' David Harber trade garden, built by Task Academy.

"This serene and naturalistic garden was on the main avenue at Chelsea Flower Show and built as sustainably as possible, centring around reused materials," the couple said. 

The whole family has been celebrating success! (Image: Humble-Bee Gardeners)

Reusable, recycled and rice husk pots were used, with the plants grown with no chemicals or peat. And the work paid off, with the garden awarded five stars.

Mr Zika and Ms Rafferty said this was the highest among the trade show gardens at Chelsea.

"We were so proud to be part of this winning team and learnt so much during this time," they said.

And the awards kept coming, with Humble-Bee also putting together a design at the show for charity Bees for Development. The design, which showcased three of the charity's hives in three unique microscapes to show how they could be incorporated into garden landscapes, was awarded a silver gilt... "to our amazement!" Said Mr Zika and Ms Rafferty.

We are excited to see what we can achieve next year. The plans are really quite special," they said.

"We are hoping through our consultation, designs, garden builds, plants and partnerships to be able to inspire a passion and appreciation for our natural world and how to get the most from it, rebuilding our relationship with it and making people’s lives better in the process.

"We would also love to change the industry or at least influence the change to less waste and more gentle methods that avoid negative impacts on the wildlife that we share our green spaces with and that we depend upon for life."