Designer: Rachel Bailey
Event: BBC Gardeners World Live 2025
Project Scope: Highly Customised Niche Bee Posts
The Brief
When landscape designer Rachel Bailey and her team approached us to collaborate on her feature garden for BBC Gardeners World Live 2025, titled 'Where There's Water, There's Life', we knew the aesthetic standards were going to be exceptionally high. The garden was designed to be a breathtaking, ecologically rich sanctuary, demonstrating how nature-based solutions and water management can create an incredible sight in a domestic setting.
To complement this masterful design, Rachel’s team needed premium habitat interventions that could seamlessly blend into the garden's unique material palette while offering genuine, commercial-grade support for local pollinators.
The Niche Solution: High-End Bespoke Manufacturing
To meet the precise vision of the garden, we took our core Niche beepost and highly customised it. While the internal engineering remained strictly focused on the biological needs of cavity-nesting solitary bees, the exterior was transformed into a bespoke piece of garden architecture.
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Multi-Sided Recessed Artwork: We moved away from our standard finish and machined intricate, multi-sided recessed artwork into the timber, giving the posts a stunning, tactile depth.
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Custom Finishes: To perfectly match Rachel’s aesthetic, the timber was finished in a beautiful, natural linseed blue paint.
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Rusted Steel Roofs: Capping off the design, we fabricated bespoke rusted steel roofs for the posts. This not only protected the standing deadwood structure from the elements but also added a gorgeous, earthy texture that tied into the garden's broader hardscaping.
By taking this highly tailored approach, we ensured the garden didn't have to rely on a flimsy, mass-produced bug hotel or insect hotel that would detract from the high-end finish. Instead, the invertebrates were provided with a structural masterpiece.
Sweeping the Awards and BBC Recognition
Rachel Bailey’s 'Where There's Water, There's Life' garden was an absolute triumph. It was the talk of BBC Gardeners World Live 2025, deservedly mopping up all the major awards at the show and proving that biodiversity can be breathtakingly beautiful.
For Niche, the absolute highlight came when the garden was featured on national television during the BBC Gardeners' World broadcast. As the cameras displayed gorgeous panning shots across our bespoke bee posts, renowned host Adam Frost specifically mentioned them, highlighting the importance of integrating functional habitat into our outdoor spaces.
It was an incredibly proud moment for our family-run business and a testament to the fact that when it comes to supporting solitary bees and championing biodiversity net gain, Niche is the brand of choice for the UK's top garden designers.
