The Ophelia Survival Garden

A drought-resilient show garden for BBC Gardeners’ World Fair 2026

Inspired by a dream about Shakespeare’s Ophelia, this garden imagines a world where water has disappeared. In this drought-resilient space, olla pots release water slowly, nourishing the woodland ferns, cyclamen and Juneberry tree. A locust mosaic offers a living example of survival through water scarcity.

After the fair, this garden will not go to waste. Its plants will grow on in Wilder’s community sites in Bermondsey, so people, nature and wildlife can benefit for years to come.

Once upon a time, Ophelia was driven to the water's edge. Now the water is gone - dried up by a changing climate. She cannot drown. So she survives differently. This dry shade woodland garden imagines how. Every plant endures without visible water. Grasses move like rivers without needing them. Ferns remember damp woodland. Hidden clay pots underground release water slowly to the roots below. The mosaic depicts locusts: creatures that survive without visible water, drawing moisture from within. Like Ophelia. Like this garden. Pick up a stone from the bowl. Each carries a word from a poem. Carry it across the garden. You are doing what Ophelia did: surviving, moving through.

Plant list

  • Snowy Mespilus — Amelanchier lamarckii

  • Big blue lily turf — Liriope muscari

  • Wood sage — Teucrium scorodonia

  • Ivy-leaved cyclamen (white) — Cyclamen hederifolium

  • Hart's-tongue fern — Asplenium scolopendrium

  • Scaly male fern — Dryopteris affinis

  • Japanese forest grass — Hakonechloa macra

  • River oats — Chasmanthium latifolium

  • Hosta — Hosta 'Krossa Regal'

  • Coral bells — Heuchera 'Caramel'

  • Barren wort — Epimedium 'Akebono'

  • Barren wort — Epimedium × versicolor 'Sulphureum'

  • Cranesbill — Geranium macrorrhizum 'Bevan's Variety'

  • Cranesbill — Geranium macrorrhizum 'Spessart'

  • Stinking iris — Iris foetidissima

  • Sweet woodruff — Galium odoratum

  • Pheasant's tail grass — Anemanthele lessoniana

  • Nettle-leaved bellflower — Campanula trachelium