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Meta has unveiled its main avenue garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, designed by landscape architect Joe Perkins.
Inside "The Meta garden: growing the future", guests will find a pavilion structure representative of the mycelium (fungi) networks that connect and support woodland life, and a central seating area sunken within the environment.
A unique digital installation named "Hyphae" can be interacted with and responds to human touch to visualise the complex communication webs in nature, illuminating the magic of fungi and the power of the mycelium network.
The installation was created as a collaboration between experiential design company Cinimod Studio and Chelsea Flower Show gold medallist Joe Perkins, featuring LEDflex and Sacha Molyneux.
The naturalistic garden also includes a stylised meadow, showcasing almost 3,000 plants native to the UK and from around the world.
The garden's message is focused on the protection of British woodlands and forests for future generations and has been designed to highlight the crucial relationship between soil, fungi and plants, which together form the basis of resilient forest ecosystems.
A colourful planting scheme of white, yellow, purple and red features specimens threatened by climate change, such as linnaea borealis and those well suited to predicted future climatic conditions like sweet chestnut and douglas fir. Alder also features for its ability to provide nitrogen in the soil, making it available to other species.
The garden will be rehomed in the National Forest after the Chelsea Flower Show as part of The Queen's Green Canopy campaign, focused on planting trees to celebrate the Queen's Platinum Jubilee.
To bring the garden to life online, Meta teamed up with gardening creator and TV host Daisy Payne to create a new, interactive augmented reality flower crown, which will be available on Facebook and Instagram.
Perkins, who previously won three awards with his Chelsea debut for Facebook in 2019 with the "Space to grow" garden, said: "There is an urgent need to redress the balance of our relationship with the natural world, and there is so much to learn from the connections in nature, both in terms of how we learn to support and preserve sustainable forest ecosystems, and in how we come together as communities – in-person and on platforms like Facebook and Instagram – to tackle climate change.
"The garden's focus on the symbiotic relationship between trees, plants, and the mycorrhizae systems they depend upon, seeks to demonstrate the necessity of connection and how vital it is for the health of all communities."
Steve Hatch, Meta's vice-president of northern Europe, said: "'The Meta garden: growing the future' is all about championing natural solutions to climate change and how we can protect our wonderful British woodlands.
"We've seen a boom in enthusiastic plant lovers across the UK during the pandemic. Individuals and communities coming together on places like Facebook Groups and Instagram to share their tips, get inspired, and educate themselves on how we can all learn from nature to make more sustainable decisions for our planet."