We spend nearly a third of our life working. And if you consider that we spend around a third of our life sleeping, then it adds up that we spend less time with our families and on leisure pursuits than we do taking meetings, drawing up spreadsheets, balancing books or operating machinery. So, in an ideal world, this place that you spend so much time in should have its pleasurable moments.
New Balance felt the same way when it commissioned a garden for its UK headquarters. This tranquil new outdoor space, named the Flimby Garden, is located alongside the American footwear brand’s Cumbria factory, and has been designed as a place exclusively for its 300-odd employees to step away from the cacophonous production floor and spend time immersed in nature.
Step into the New Balance garden in Cumbria
This is more than just a landscape project. A significant number of scientific studies have highlighted how green spaces in the workplace can lead to a significant reduction in stress levels, a boost in creativity and productivity, and even enhanced cognitive function, and the garden is a reflection of New Balance’s longstanding belief that exceptional craftsmanship begins with keeping the people that make its products happy. As one of the few global footwear brands to maintain domestic manufacturing in both the UK and the US, New Balance continues to invest in the factories, communities and skilled makers that define its legacy, and the garden is a lasting symbol of that commitment, offering employees a dedicated restorative space for resting, reflecting and connecting.
The garden’s creator is Bleue Wickham-Burnham, founder of London-based jewellery brand Bleue Burnham. A jewellery designer may seem an unusual choice for such a project, but Wickham-Burnham had already been talking with the brand about other collaborations when a conversation unearthed that he was also an enthusiastic amateur gardener and keen to try his hand on a more professional plane. The passion had blossomed in his late teens growing up in East Sussex and is evident in his jewellery output, which is heavily influenced by horticulture and the natural world.
Echoing the surrounding landscape of the Lake District, the garden features gently undulating flower beds, pockets of water and flowering cherry trees, as well as seating areas, communal gathering points and customised multicoloured bird boxes. Taking inspiration from the bold New Perennial block plantings of designers such as Piet Oudolf and cottage garden styles such as those at Great Dixter and Sissinghurst, alongside pre-Raphaelite floral renderings and 17th-century topiary, the Flimby garden is filled with varieties that include roses, peonies, anemones, foxgloves and lilies, and is already a much loved haven for local birds, bees and other wildlife (a stoat family being regular visitors), as well as for the factory’s employees, some of whom participated in the planting.
‘It was both a privilege and an honour to have been entrusted with designing a garden for New Balance,’ says Wickham-Burnham. ‘The project gave us the opportunity to explore how our design language and philosophy could interact with garden design, creating a space that is playful in its design, while encouraging moments of pause, connection and joy throughout the working day.’
Watering Can Pendant by Bleue Burnham
To coincide with the garden’s opening, New Balance and Bleue Burnham have also produced a documentary-style film chronicling the development of the project from concept to completion. The film includes a special appearance from renowned gardener and broadcaster Monty Don, a hero of Wickham-Burnham, who grew up glued to Gardeners’ World. ‘They say never meet your hero, because they often disappoint you,’ he notes. ‘But in my case, it was the opposite.’
