RHS Hampton Court

When providing marque hire for the most famous Flower Shows in the world you need to have confidence that the equipment is delivered and erected on time, every time.

Location
RHS Hampton Court Flower Show
Hampton Court
Surrey
KY8 9AU
Kent
UK
Client Logo

Project Brief

The marquee hire covers over thirty acres of the Palace gardens and attracting nearly two hundred thousand visitors and international media coverage, Hampton Court is one of the largest flower shows in the world.

The Royal Horticultural Society needed a large variety of temporary structures and marquees to accommodate everything from the enormous floral pavilions and feature tents, to commercial traders tents and organisers offices. In total, the Society required over twenty three thousand square metres of covered structures with nearly a kilometre of screening and picket fence. To minimise the commercial impact on the business operation of Hampton Court Palace, and the physical impact on the gardens, the build time for this project was just three weeks, with the site needing to be completely clear just seven days after the show.

The RHS sought the advice and expertise of the project management team at Danco to devise appropriate structures for the different areas within the show, including one that needed to accommodate a full size replica Kentish Oast House! We also needed a variety of solutions to allow for the British climate in July, which as we all know can vary from tropical heat to unremitting rain.

Marquee hire, london marquee hire london

The Solution

The largest marquee hire at the show was provided for the show sponsors – The Daily Mail who constructed their show gardens beneath the cavernous span of our 40m wide structure. The tent was put up using a crane and once erected presented an ideal canvas for the garden designers to recreate an idyllic English country scene, with a cottage, Oast house, duck pond and lavish flower gardens within the 3000 square metres of clear space.
 
The elegant pagoda style roofs of our ‘Chinese hat’ tents were used to provide an eye catching solution to the needs of the plethora of commercial traders and individual garden builders within the showground, with a range of 3m – 6m tents being employed across the site.

To create a softer feel to the straight ends on a clearspan structure, Danco marquee hire used radial ends on the 25m structures on site, their curved shape making them ideal for lecture theatres and demonstration areas.  If required transparent roof panels can be used to bring in additional light and give a conservatory type feel.

The flower tents took particular planning to ensure the plants were kept in an appropriate environment throughout the week long show. Air conditioning or ceiling fans could not be used because of the damage caused by down draughts, and hence we used a combination of mesh gable panels, ventilated walls and canvas roofs on certain structures maintain gentle ventilation to the growers' prize displays.

The on site team and the Project Manager worked closely with the RHS throughout the planning and build, ensuring that the Hampton Court Flower Show was yet again a truly stunning display of the very best in British Horticulture in one of the most prestigious locations in the country.