Five talented designers were given £6,000 each to design a cutting-edge garden. But with such a small budget, what did they come up with?

Five of Britain's hottest new garden design talents were chosen to stage their first show gardens in the new Conceptual Gardens category at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show this year. But there was a catch - they had to do it within a budget of just £6,000.

Awarded by the RHS, this grant is just half the average cost of other show gardens at Hampton Court, with the young designers having to demonstrate that their gardens can be created within this capped budget. With the brief demanding that they push the boundaries of garden design, it was asking a lot.

"So often it's been the case that given the right budget a designer should be able to do anything," says Bob Sweet, RHS Shows Organiser. "We hope that by keeping the budget tight we'll create a level playing field."

Most of the designers got round the tiny budget by begging and borrowing from friends and contacts

Most of the designers got round the tiny budget by begging and borrowing from friends and contacts. Sarah Price designed the 'Repetition and Difference' Conceptual garden using trees lent by the contractors supplying them.

"There are lots of hidden costs, like electricity, that I didn't realise I'd have," she says. "Even the luminous vests you have to wear when you're building the garden are £10 each."

She admits the finances have restricted her choice of plants, although she made the most of what she had: soft, restful strips of purple, hazy planting interspersed with geometric rills of water and scented chamomile.

Art of nature

Pushing the boundaries to the limit wa Wayne Richards, designer of the gold-medal winning 'The Danger of Need', a four-sided cube inspired by the Garden of Eden and featuring artworks, real actors and an audio/video installation.

"I wanted it to be more like something you would find at an exhibition or gallery than a garden at a flower show," he said.

The design was intended to create a sense of exclusion. Visitors walked around the four sides of the cube, and only on the last side could they look through into the garden in the centre. Actors inside played Adam and Eve in a richly-planted exotic garden designed to resemble what Eden might have looked like.

Also taking Eden as its inspiration was Vaughan Aston, but with a radically different approach. His 'New Eden' garden was about nature's ability to regenerate and won a prestigious silver-gilt flora medal. Pre-rusted burnt orange Corten steel and piles of rubble were interplanted with the weeds, grasses and birch trees that grow where an industrial area becomes derelict.

The RHS deliberately encourages designers to throw out the rule book in this category

The RHS deliberately encourages designers to throw out the rule book in this category. Bob Sweet says Hampton Court has always been known for gardens that don't fit the norm - and it's a reputation he wants to encourage and build on.

One challenging design came from Andrew Duff, who used abstract interlocking concrete shapes to create a bronze flora medal-winning garden of varying levels. Michelle Wake created a twist on the commonly accepted structure of a river bank in her 'The River Unwound'. Awarded a silver medal, this garden took the banks, trees and beach that line a river and sent them twisting through the water, in a quirky, witty take on a natural scene.

"There have been some very different gardens over the years - some memorable for being different rather than good," says Bob Sweet. "We're trying to rekindle that spirit of originality."