News

Based in Los Angeles, NAVEL is a test site for community-driven projects, critical equitable practices, collaborative learning and kinship. Wayward is thrilled to work with NAVEL to further develop green space strategies for Los Angeles. Learn more here.

Did somebody say SILVER medal...? The House of Wayward Plants won silver at RHS Chelsea Flower Show this year and we are pretty chuffed! Our stand was our first chance to tell the public about our reuse scheme which sees thousands of plants rehomed from Chelsea and Hampton Court each year. A big thank you to Barking Riverside and National Trust for their generous and kind support, and to RHS for hosting us in the Discovery Zone.

As the Official Reuse Partner of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, the House of Wayward Plants collected 6000 plants and trees and distributed them to 80 community groups and schools to benefit green spaces across London. Thank you to our amazing volunteers and to Barking Riverside for their partnership over the last three years and to DF Clark for their incredible help! 

The following groups and schools benefitted from the scheme:

Do you have a London community or school garden in need of plants, trees or materials? You can rehome plants from the RHS Chelsea Flower Show through the House of Wayward Plants reuse scheme!

Please note: If you also wish to help out by volunteering with us at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, please sign up here.

Volunteer to help us rehome thousands of plants and trees from RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2019. They will be distributed to hundreds of community groups and schools across London!

Please note: This form is for our wonderful volunteers. If you wish to collect plants for your community garden or school, please apply here.

City of Ideas is an ambitious partnership project grown out of many years of collaborative working in the heart of the Cultural Industries Quarter (CIQ) in Sheffield.

Supported by Arts Council’s Ambition for Excellence fund, this project is designed to connect communities of interest in the CIQ. Through regular talk night Site Sessions, the commission of new public artworks and collaborating with city planners, contractors and architects we aim to energise and build the viability, visibility and visit-ability of the area.

Come adopt a tree with Wayward at Barking Riverside!

Renwick Road, Barking, IG11 0DS (Map below)

Saturday 1 December, 10am - 4pm

On December 1, in partnership with the GLA and the Conservation Volunteers, Wayward will be hosting tree adoptions at Barking Riverside. 5000 saplings - bird cherry, field maple and rowan - will be distributed across 10 sites by Wayward, The National Trust and the Conservation Volunteers.

This summer come to Morden Hall Park to adopt a plant that was previously seen at the RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show.

In our third year running, Wayward's plant rehoming scheme for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, in partnership with Barking Riverside, DF Clark and the Royal Horticulture Society, has distributed approximately 5000 plants and tons of trees to more than 60 community groups and schools across London. These groups include:

Improbable Botany, Wayward's limited edition anthology of short stories about strange plants and botanical futures by major science fiction authors, can now be found at the Archinect Outpost -- Archinect's new bookshop at the A+D Museum in Los Angeles! 

Yes, this happened: Kate Moss handed out moss for adoption during the opening of 23 Old Bond - Stella McCartney's new flagship store (where we designed the gardens)!

For the third year, Wayward is rehoming thousands of plants and materials from the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, in partnership with Barking Riverside London and DF Clark. The plants will be distributed to community groups and schools within the local area of East London and through wider London.

For the third year, Wayward is rehoming thousands of plants and materials from the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2018, in partnership with Barking Riverside London and DF Clark. The plants will be distributed to community groups and schools across London. We are looking for volunteers to get involved both during the set-up and break-down of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

Wayward helped a London synagogue to explore the transformation of a disused flat, attached to the building, into a home for a Syrian refugee family of four. We made drawings in the initial stages of the project to aid them in the pursuit of funding and support, visualising the space and further developing low budget design solutions that would create a welcoming family home.

It is easy to feel helpless when reading about the refugee crisis, and so we leapt at the chance to do something meaningful - putting our skills as designers to use. Here are some of the drawings we made.

Wayward are honoured to be designing a memorial for Nelson Mandela in Liverpool in his centennial year, commissioned by the grassroots educational organisation, Mandela8.

Heather will be giving a talk for the Department of landscape architecture at Cal Poly Pomona as part of the 60th Anniversary series of lectures on on Wednesday 11 October, 12-1pm. 

Wayward was honoured to be asked by Chelsea College of Arts BA Interior and Spatial Design to present an annual Wayward Sustainable Design Award to the student who has demonstrated responsible reuse and sustainability in their work. In the award's inaugural  year, we selected Ricky Tong, who had a wonderful, community engaged process for the Millbank area that resulted in testing and building 1:1 prototypes for a mobile urban garden.  His trophy: a spikey plant that we rescued from the Chelsea Flower Show. 

The arts has enabled new landscape projects that operate in the gaps between planning, design, community engagement and legacy management, creating some of the UK’s most unique approaches to artists led landscapes co-created with participants and ultimately the projects owners. Culture & Placemaking agency Futurecity opens up this practice in conversation with those at its forefront. Tom will be in discussion with  Future City and Habitorials in a seminar entitled, "Galleries without Walls - Artist Led Landscapes."

Bicicinema is a festival dedicated to the environmental sustainability, particularly to circular economy. From 6-8 October 2017, the festival will propose a varied and colourful program of events, talks, interviews with experts, performances, workshops and more in the city of Padua.

The festival will be anticipated by shows and events in various areas of the city, involving people from all over Europe. Citizens will be invited to share expierences and ideas on sustainable living, by taking part in public events and online competitions.

Wayward will be part of the fourth dialogue in the Time & Place series by Central working and Club Zetter, which seeks to address sustainability & its role in the modern neighbourhood. 

Moderated by David Michon, former editor of Monocle and Icon magazines, industry thought leaders Juliet Kinsman (Bouteco), Andrew Stephen (SRA), Tom Kendall (Wayward) and Shubhankar Ray (G-Star) will scrutinise how we're approaching sustainability today, & explore how our neighbourhoods and lives might be changed for the future.

6:30pm, Tuesday September 5th

We're thrilled that with 407 backers, Improbable Botany has reached 162% of its funding goal on Kickstarter! Thank you to all our backers for helping to bring this project to life. We're working on the final edits of the book, and it will soon be sent to the printers. And meanwhile - our first book review is in with the Financial Times! 

An enormous thanks from us to all our backers for supporting 'Improbable Botany' as we head towards the finish line. With only ten days to go until the campaign ends, we're delighted to announce a new contributor -- an 11th author -- to our line-up: Rachel Armstrong.

Wayward is excited to announce our first book... and our first Kickstarter campaign !

Improbable Botany, a brand-new science fiction anthology about alien plant conquests, fantastical ecosystems, benevolent dictatorships and techno-utopias.

Where do the plants go after the RHS Chelsea Flower Show?

This spring, Wayward is working with Barking Riverside London, DF Clark and Futurecity to produce an innovative recycling scheme: to rehome thousands of the plants and materials from the world’s most prestigious flower show.

Tom will be speaking about Wayward's projects at the 2017 International Conference on Urban Agriculture, scheduled from 17-20 May 2017 in Seoul, South Korea. It marks the 6th year since the Urban Agriculture Expo in Seoul has started in 2013. UN designated this year as the "Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development" and it is also the 'Year of chicken" in Korea. We look forward to sharing our projects and bringing ideas home!

The Symposium Transient Social Environments: Temporary Urban and Interior Interventions explores transient environments within both urban and interior situations, with a focus on how such design interventions engender social agency.

Wayward have been invited to be the 2017 Practitioners-in-Residence for the Interior and Spatial Design Programme at Chelsea College of Art. With the students, we are co-developing a collaborative design-build project for an outdoor classroom that will facilitate new forms of dialogue and exchange.

This is a lovely project we've never posted ... Wayward and Studio Weave in collaboration were one of four shortlisted practices to design a new play-space for Three Mills Green in east London. The competition was organised by Architecture Foundation on behalf of the Olympic Park Legacy Company, The Legacy List charity and landowners, Lee Valley Regional Park Authority.

Our playgrounds at Torriano Schools and Carlton School, part of the Camden Active Spaces project, have been included in the exhibition, “Well Built: Designing for Health and Wellbeing ​in Architecture,” at the Museum of Architecture, London. 

Farmopolis on the Jetty has been shortlisted for the 5th European Innovation Retail Award by the GCSC. Wish us luck!

Camden Active Spaces, including the playgrounds for Torriano Schools and Carlton School designed by Wayward and erect architecture, were awarded a New London Architecture Award in the Wellbeing category. The annual awards is organised and hosted by New London Architecture to celebrate the best architecture and development recently completed or in design across the capital. 

Heather will be speaking about Farmopolis and other Wayward projects at Love Bites, an opening event for the Southbank Centre's Festival of Love. Clore Ballroom, Saturday 9 July at 1pm.

Wayward is proud to have been involved in designing a landscape masterplan for the Kigutu Hospital, an initiative of Village Health Works, a grassroots, 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization  that provides quality, compassionate, dignified health care in rural Burundi, East Africa. 

The Triennale International Exhibition returns after a hiatus of twenty years! Documentation, films and materials from the Union Street Urban Orchard have been included as part of the XXI Triennale Milano from 12 April - 12 September 2016.

Heather is speaking about Wayward's work at the 7th Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Food Justice and Sustainability Weekend in Chicago.

Wayward are leading two Local Knowledge Sessions on Greening the High Street and the Future of Libraries for Whitechapel Gallery, in conjunction with the Literalley project. 

The Local Knowledge Project (2013 – ) is an ongoing piece of research designed to prompt dialogue between individuals and organisations in east London. The project seeks to gather knowledge about the concerns of people living and working near the Whitechapel Gallery. Participation in this project is by invitation.

The Atlantic commissioned Wayward to create an installation of the Algaegarden as the showcase entrance for the CityLab conference - the Annual Preeminent Gathering of Global Mayors. 

The BALI National Landscape Awards 2015 were awarded for the Camden Active Spaces Playgrounds (Carlton School, Torriano Juniors School and Torriano Infants). Congratulations to our contractors, Blakedown, for this honour!

Spices are put in the spotlight this summer at Kew, with the Full of Spice festival running from May through to September.

You can trade ideas, stories, recipes and remedies at The Spice Exchange, an extraordinary timber pavilion interlaced with thousands of spice jars designed and produced by Wayward. Beneath its unique cantilevered roof, The Spice Exchange houses a kiosk run by The East India Company an exhibition space, an open-air theatre and a participatory story exchange.

We are very pleased to announce that our project Queen’s Walk Window Gardens (2013) has been nominated for the European Award for Ecological Gardening 2015.

The Jury Board made up of Katrin Bohn/GER, Joachim Brocks/AUT, Nigel Dunnett/UK, Ulrika Flodin Furas/SWE, Brigitte Goss/GER, Přemysl Krejčiřik/CZ, and Karl Ploberger/AUT has nominated projects which are innovative, sustainable, have a model character and contribute to raising public awareness for ecological gardening.

The Urban Physic Garden has been selected for the Landscape Institute Award - the first temporary project to ever win the prestigious prize.

The LI Awards are presented to landscape professionals in recognition of their outstanding work, and to encourage excellence. Every year, the LI applauds those working on the most innovative projects to have shaped, restored and protected the natural and built environment.

Queen's Walk Window Gardens and Borough Market Hall are part of the exhibition, Rethinking the Urban Landscape at the Building Centre.

Wayward, in partnership with graphic designers Project Projects, have been selected for the National Parks Now fellowship with the Van Alen Institute in New York and the US National Park Service. The initiative is to develop case studies for attracting diverse audiences, telling new stories, and engaging the next generation of visitors at a time of fast-evolving technologies, regional contexts, and audience expectations.

Borough Market has christened its first ever bitter Borough Barrow, following a nationwide search to find the perfect name to mark its 1,000th anniversary. The beer was brewed using hops grown, dried and harvested on site as part of Wayward's design for Borough Market Hall. 

The Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey presents the exhibition in/humano (in/human), a critical vision of the problem of environmental protection today through the work of seventeen artists from around the world who have used photography, installation, object art and video as tools to establish diverse channels of identification between human beings and their natural environment.

We are very pleased to share that the Queens Walk Window Gardens have been shortlisted for a New London Architecture Award! The New London Awards recognise the very best in architecture, planning and development in the capital, including both new and proposed projects across all sectors of the built environment, selected by an international expert jury. 

Heather will be speaking about Wayward's work at the Art/Work Association. Art/ Work Association (A/WA) is an association of artists and creative workers and a self-generated programme of talks, screenings, seminars, reading groups, workshops and critical feedback sessions, conceived as a forum for peer exchange. A/WA offers a support network for associates and enables self-organised learning, professional development and critical dialogue.

Wayward's plant adoptions feature at the 10th Architecture Biennale in São Paulo (running from 12 October to 1 December) as part of the exhibition, "Actions: What You can Do in the City," curated by the Canadian Centre for Architecture Montreal.

Heather will be speaking on Wayward's work at University of Greenwich's Architecture Open Lecture Series.

Architecture Open Lecture Series 2013/2014, Norbert Singer Lecture Theatre / M055, Mansion Site, Avery Hill Campus, Wednesday 9 October 2013 at 6pm. Read more about it here.

Check out Bompas & Parr’s newest cookbook, Tutti Frutti, to get Wayward's recipe for our Fruit and Flower Ice Cream Sundae (photographed here). Mmmm!

Heather will be giving an invited talk on Wayward projects at the conference, “Vacant spaces, rural scapes and wildscapes” which will take place on 15 June 2013 in Milan, in the frame of the project “Backyards – vacant spaces and emerging communities” organized by Architetti Senza Frontiere – Italia (member of Architecture Sans Frontières International) and supported by the Politecnico di Milano and its Department of Architecture and Urban Studies.

Wayward's Union Street Urban Orchard has been included in the exhibition Open Source Urbanism: Strategies and Tactics for the Transformation of Public Space at the Biennale dello Spazio Pubblico, Casa dell'Architettura. The exhibition is curated by Tspoon, an architecture studio based in Rome. 

Check out the ARUP Penguin Pool in London on 28 May 2013, where Wayward Plants have been invited to exhibit our films, including documentation of the Helsinki Plant Tram, the Union Street Urban Orchard and the Urban Physic Garden. The Penguin Pool is Arup’s global creative events series designed to inform, inspire and entertain.

Wayward is now a Landscape Institute Registered Practice, with Creative Director Heather Ring a Chartered Member of the Landscape Institute (CMLI). Chartered Membership of the Landscape Institute formally recognises a member’s technical and professional competence as a landscape architect in the UK. Landscape Institute Registered Practices are at the heart of the landscape architecture profession. They are vital in raising the profile of the profession, communicating its importance, and advancing the art and science of landscape architecture.

For Smart-Magazine, Wayward asked artist Anna Schuleit, "How can we integrate wilderness into our cities?"

The Question and Answer article series joins two creative minds from a range of backgrounds to better understand the transformation of our cities. Enjoy urban nature group Wayward’s intriguing question and artist Anna Schuleit’s insightful answer.

As part of the 70th anniversary of the British Council in Poland, the Everything Forever Now exhibition – which includes the Urban Physic Garden – will be leaving Kuala Lumpur and traveling to Poland! The exhibition will open at MOCAK from 14 February – 28 April.

You can also read an interview with curator and Wallpaper* editor-at-large Henrietta Thompson about the travelling exhibition.

The Helsinki Plant Tram (2012) by Wayward Plants has been shortlisted for the prestigious D&AD Yellow Pencil design award!

D&AD celebrates and nurtures outstanding work in design and advertising. The Yellow Pencil is recognised the world over as a symbol of the very highest creative achievement. 

Tim Lindsay, Chief Executive of D&AD wrote of the Spatial Design nominees:

Heather will be giving a talk at Cultivating the City at FARM:Shop Dalston organised by the Landscape Institute on Saturday 14 September.

Cultivating the City: A delectable feast for all the senses – come celebrate the end of summer with the Landscape Institute London. 

Heather and Jarred have both been invited to speak at the Naturoids series of talks at the Royal College of Art (Royal College of Art, Kensington Gore, London SW7 2EU). Heather will be speaking about productive environments on 20 October and Jarred will be speaking about his wormery research on the 17 November. More friends and collaborators of ours are speaking in the series, including Eike Sindlinger, Synnove Fredericks and Tim Waterman. Check it out!

The brilliant comic in the Urban Physic Garden newspaper – illustrated by Toby Leigh and written by Jacob Sager Weinstein – has been included in an exhibition at Somerset House by the Association of Illustrators featuring the Best of British illustration in the past year. Congrats Toby and Jacob!

The third installment of Everything Forever Now featuring the Urban Physic Garden opened at Publika in Kuala Lumpur.

Declining resources, increasing energy costs and a growing population are forcing us all to think about the way we live. This exhibition celebrates the new generation of designers and architects in Malaysia and Britain that are experimenting with new approaches that create beautiful and desirable products while also working to improve the longevity, lifecycle, materials and social impact of the work they create.

Wayward have been invited by ARUP and Selfridges to be part of the Selfridges Rooftop Project - exploring the revival of the original Hanging Gardens on the roof of Selfridges, which closed in the 40’s, The gardens were host to afternoon teas, fashion shows, gun clubs and mongoose. The new vision centres around the fusion of entertainment, education, food, horticulture, ecology and community.

Jarred has been invited to give a talk about the Urban Physic Garden for the Carrot City Symposium (Designing for Urban Agriculture) at Birmingham School of Architecture.

The second instalment of the British Council Everything Forever Now exhibition featuring the Urban Physic Garden was officially opened last night at the Ho Chi Minh City Exhibition House by the British Ambassador to Vietnam, Dr Anthony Stokes.

The Urban Physic Garden is part of the British Council exhibition, Everything Forever Now, which showcases contemporary design that pioneers sustainable values - technologies and techniques that promise to change our environment for the better, but without preaching or shouting about their green credentials. These are intelligent designs that aim to improve daily life and our relationship with the environment rather than compromise it.

The Urban Physic Garden has been included in the Design for Public Spaces exhibition at the Design Centre Zamek Cieszyn in Poland from November - December 2011. 

The Urban Physic Garden has been included in the 5th International Lodz Design Festival at the Centrum Architektury, Poland,  as part of the exhibition, “Redirection: Change in architecture." from 20-30 October. Founded in 2007, Lodz Design Festival stands for ideas, people and action.

The Urban Physic Garden is shortlisted for the RIBA Forgotten Spaces Award and is part of a curated exhibition at Somerset House. 

On 20th October the Royal Institute of British Architects launches a captivating architecture exhibition at Somerset House, exploring imaginative uses for abandoned spaces across London.

The International Garden Festival is showcasing the Algaegarden at the IIDEX/Neocon Canada in Toronto on September 22 and 23. Algaegarden celebrates the beauty and productive potential of algae through a design that underlines its diversity and meaning. The garden leads the visitor to appreciate algae both as an alternative to oil and other energy sources and a source of food and nutrition. This garden was selected from nearly 200 projects following the call for proposals for the 12th International Garden Festival.

‘Herbarium’ is am anthology of poems written by over 50 poets celebrating and exploring the contemporary resonances of medicinal plants and herbs responding to the plants of the Urban Physic Garden. Join us on 22 July, 2011 at the Urban Physic Garden for a live reading of poems from the anthology, edited by James Wilkes, and the launch of a zine which will give the anthology a printed afterlife. This anthology is the first in the Capsule Editions series in collaboration.

Wayward is thrilled to receive a Special Commendation from the Conservation Foundation for the Union Street Urban Orchard and the Urban Physic Garden, at the Green Corners Award Ceremony. The Conservation Foundation has been promoting positive environmental news, awareness and action since 1982.

The Architecture Foundation is pleased to announce the publication of The Union Street Urban Orchard: A Case Study of Creative Interim Use.

This book is seen as a legacy of the Urban Orchard, designed and produced by Wayward, offering insight into how this garden was created. There are essays from those who made it happen, DIY  tips, recipes using the fruits of the Orchard and a foreword by journalist and presenter, Jon Snow. It is hoped that this publication will inspire others to try and grow their own and think creatively about disused spaces within the city.

Algaegarden has been invited to return to The International Garden Festival in 2011. The garden was selected from nearly 200 projects following the call for proposals for the 12th International Garden Festival. Algaegarden celebrates the beauty and productive potential of algae through a design that underlines its diversity and meaning. The garden leads the visitor to appreciate algae both as an alternative to oil and other energy sources and a source of food and nutrition.

Heather has been invited to give a talk about Wayward at the Digital Belonging event: “Connecting communities online, offline and everything in between …” organised by NearLabs on 19 February. The intention of the day is to explore the burgeoning relationship between technology and community building.

Heather is the invited guest speaker at the Landscape Institute London as part of the programme on “Cities, Communities and Gardens” for their holiday event on 14 December 2010 at the Seven Dials Club in London’s Covent Garden.

OVER 20 ARTISTS present new works as POST returns to Merton in south London with Away Day. Engaging with suburban spaces of leisure, Away Day is a series of site-specific artworks for three public parks: Mostyn Gardens in Morden, Wandle Park in Colliers Wood and Ravensbury Park in Mitcham. Diverse interventions, performances and temporary artworks accost visitors with imagined alternative realities and new mappings of these spaces during weekends in May and June. 

Wayward Plants has a theme song! With music by Mr. Solo, lyrics by Wayward and film by Nikki Paglia. Sing along!