Sunnyside Rural Trust’s Artisan Tools Feature In Gold Medal Winning NGS Chelsea Show Garden

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Sunnyside Rural Trust is very excited that a selection of our beautiful hand-refurbished tools are on display as part of decorated garden designer Tom Stuart Smith’s 2024 National Garden Scheme Chelsea gold medal-winning Show Garden.

The freshly waxed and polished wooden handled hoes, spades, forks, hand tools and shears have been reconditioned by SRT employee, Lewis Sinfield, along with a team of trainees and volunteers at our Northchurch site.

Sunnyside Tool Project Founder, Lewis Sinfield

Quote from Sunnyside’s Tool Restoration Project Founder and Project Worker, Lewis Sinfield:

‘I am proud to have helped Sunnyside get to the Chelsea Flower Show. It’s great to show people what our trainees can achieve when given the chance.  

Sunnyside enables people to discover the skills and strengths that they didn’t know they had. Some people change completely when they are working with the tools. It’s very moving to see.’

Designed by eight-time Chelsea gold medal-winner, Tom Stuart-Smith, The National Garden Scheme Garden is funded by Project Giving Back and will be relocated to form part of the new garden at Maggie’s at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge.

The garden, in which the tools feature, is designed to give a sense of calm and connection to nature. It incorporates a woodland theme and includes gently drifting underplanting laid out through an open hazel coppice.

Credit: National Garden Scheme, Julie Skelton

Find out more about the Tool Project from Lewis himself:
‘I believe that this tool project can get to new heights to earn money for the Trust and to provide supported employment opportunities and to give the trainees new skills’ 

Lewis’s aim for the Sunnyside tool project is to rescue old garden tools that were destined for the tip and restore them, whilst teaching trainees new skills and generating additional income. When he gets time Lewis wants to create flower planters out of wood and other projects that are eco-friendly. 

To read more about the NGS 2024 Chelsea Garden, please visit their website: ngs.org.uk/our-chelsea-garden