Our Hoverfly Haven started to take shape in April when the RHS reached out to ask if we’d like to work with them to create a community cube show garden to celebrate the release of a new Wild About Hoverflies booklet produced by The Wildlife Trusts and the RHS. Well, this wasn’t an opportunity we could turn down, but we couldn’t do it alone!
Creating a Haven for Hoverflies
In July, our team helped shine a light on the importance of hoverflies at the RHS Wentworth Woodhouse Flower Show. Our Hoverfly Haven garden, created with Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust, the RHS, and designer Sam Galloway, showcased how native wildflowers and wildlife-friendly features can support these vital pollinators.
Hoverfly Haven design team (Jo Rawson)
We met with colleagues at Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust and agreed to take it on with myself (Jo Rawson) taking the lead from Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and Elesha Searles representing Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust. Jenny Laville from RHS invited a young designer to our next meeting, and we hit it off straight away – that designer was Samuel Galloway, and our show garden design team was born.
Meeting regularly on Teams throughout May and June to co-create plans for the garden, the Hoverfly Haven quickly took shape benefitting from Sam’s creative design flair, Jo’s practical wildlife gardening experience and Elesha’s ecological expertise. Together, we ensured that we encapsulated everything that different hoverfly species need to thrive, from multiple lagoons full of water, leaf litter and sticks for hoverflies who lay their eggs in wet habitats such as tapered drone fly and batman hoverfly, to log piles, leaf litter and dried stems for overwintering.
Log piles, lagoons and willow sculptures (Jo Rawson)
Hoverflies are truly the unsung heroes in our gardens, and everyone can create spaces to help them to thrive. No space is too small: even a small yard can make a wonderful habitat for hoverflies. By creating spaces that cater to every stage in a hoverfly’s lifecycle, we can help hoverflies to thrive once more and help to halt the decline of the species.Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust.
Hoverfly Haven plant delivery (Jo Rawson)
Care was taken to select plant species to give the best possible benefit for hoverflies with the flat umbels of yarrow, wild carrot and fennel, and the nectar rich flowers of black knapweed, scabious, verbena, fleabane and rough hawkbit. It was challenging to find a nursery who could supply such a variety of show quality wildflowers plants grown in peat free compost, but it was vital we stuck to our values and showcased how stunning gardens don’t have to come with a price to pay for our precious peatland habitats. PlantWild, based in Horsington, Templecombe rose to our challenge and supplied us with a fabulous selection of plants – so good in fact that on the first day of building the garden in the grounds of Wentworth Woodhouse, the plants had no sooner been unloaded from the van than they were covered in hoverflies!
We also wanted to create our show cube without using plastic, so beautiful old stone troughs were sourced for the lagoons. All the wood for the log piles was sourced locally from Potteric Carr and Valley Wildlife and leaf litter and sticks were collected locally too.
Willow hoverfly sculpture created by Dragon Willow ( Jo Rawson)
A magnificent willow sculpture formed the centrepiece of the garden and was created by Leilah from Dragon Willow. Wild at Heart, a local community group in Rotherham, helped to shape the garden design by creating willow hoverflies to bring the planting to life. The group works with adults with mental and physical health disabilities to actively participate in green social prescribing and nature-based wellbeing activities, and many of the group enjoyed coming to see the garden at the show.
It was a glorious sunny Sunday morning when we arrived at Wentworth Woodhouse to build the garden. The first thing to be placed in the cube was the large willow hoverfly sculpture, followed by the heavy stone troughs and the log piles. The plants then followed – starting in the middle with the tall fennel, verbena and wild carrot, then using hemp agrimony for structure and planting around it with scabious, fleabane, oxeye daisy, sneezewort and black knapweed. Ferns were planted around the log piles and water loving plants such as ragged robin near the lagoons. We filled in with peat free compost and leaf litter, adding sticks and hollow stems as we went and finishing with the small willow sculptures.
Hoverfly Haven community cube garden with interpretation (Jo Rawson)
My favourite part of the project was sharing the Hoverfly Haven with the thousands of visitors who came to see the show. So many people absolutely loved it and we received such positive comments, with many taking inspiration back to their gardens. To support people to do more to help hoverflies we set up a linktree of useful online resources including a plant list for the garden. You can explore it here - https://linktr.ee/wildlife.gardening and our flier signposted visitors to a world of information and inspiration including our very own Wildlife Gardening Hub | Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. Thanks to teams from both wildlife trusts for their help staffing the cube throughout the five days of the show and for handing out countless fliers through the heatwave and torrential rain!
Creating the Hoverfly Haven will live in my memories forever as one of my career highlights. It was an honour and a privilege to be involved in creating something which inspired so many people to take notice of our garden’s unsung heroes. We all fell in love with hoverflies through creating this garden and we shared that love through the Hoverfly Haven.
Designer Sam Galloway planting up our cube garden (Jo Rawson)
Designing the Hoverfly Haven garden has been a joy — a chance to fuse storytelling, ecology, and craft into something lasting. Collaborating with the RHS, Sheffield and Rotherham Wildlife Trust, and Yorkshire Wildlife Trust has been deeply rewarding. It’s a privilege to work with teams so driven by purpose. As a designer, I’m drawn to projects that resonate beyond shows and seeing the Wild at Heart group shape the garden with their willow hoverflies has been a highlight. I’m proud this garden will live on at Clifton Park and Valley Wildlife — rooted in community and built for both people and pollinators.
The garden now lives on at Valley Wildlife in Rotherham and Wild at Heart’s community garden at Clifton Park, where it has created new havens for hoverflies and is enabling local people to enjoy the garden for years to come.
