WORCESTER-born garden designer Sadie May Stowell will be making her debut at the UK's top horticultural event this spring. She is building the Viking Cruises Norse Garden at the Chelsea Flower Show, which runs from May 20-24, with a little bit of help from Hereford Cathedral's head stonemason Simon Hudson. It will be in the artisan section of the show, an area of intriguing, creative designs for small spaces.

Miss Stowell explained: "The garden aims to capture the essence of the Viking age and offer enthusiastic visitors to Chelsea a glimpse into the sense of history and adventure that is inherent to Viking. Aside from creating the prow of a Viking Longship, we are bringing a sense of the Nordic to Chelsea with colours of the sea in beautiful blue and green planting as well as reference to the mountain landscape using pine trees as a backdrop.”

Her design embodies the spirit of Viking exploration and she has created a strong layout with structures harking back to the Viking age surrounded by layers of natural planting. Pools of rippling water nestle among stones carved with Viking runic symbols, which provide a network of stepping-stones to the central feature – the prow of the Viking ship. The task of carving the rune stones is in the hands of Hereford Cathedral’s head stonemason Simon Hudson. The runic symbols represent the story of a journey and are carved in blocks of local sandstone.

The Chelsea garden will be the latest accolade for MIss Stowell, whose parents live at Whitbourne, near Bromyard. Brought up at Cradley, near Malvern, she attended the local primary school and Dyson Perrins High before studying fine art at Worcester College of Technology. She then went to Pershore College to study garden design and first came to public attention in 2005 when she was the overall winner of Channel 4's national garden competition the Great Garden Challenge