RHS HAMPTON COURT

LOCATION:

RHS Hampton Court Flower Show, Hampton Court, Surrey, Kent, KY8 9AU

PROJECT BRIEF:

With marquee structures covering over thirty six acres of the Palace gardens, The Hampton Court Palace Flower Show is one of the largest of its kind attracting over 135,000 visitors and international media coverage.

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 fencing. 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. 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.

SOLUTION:

The largest of the temporary structures supplied was for the floral exhibitors, where a cavernous 30m x 225m clearspan marquee offered the ideal solution to cover this area of the show.

The elegant pagoda style roofs of our ‘Chinese hat’ tents were used to provide an eye catching solution to the needs of the 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 units and ceiling fans could not be used because of the potential damage caused by downdrafts so we used a combination of mesh gable panels, ventilated walls and canvas roofs on certain structures to maintain the prize displays housed within.

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