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Winning garden supported by Dixie micro-piles

Client:	M&G garden
Location:	Chelsea Flower Show, London
Approved Installer:	Charterbuild
Garden Contractor	Crocus
Reference No:	CS170

The award for Best Show Garden at the 2017 Chelsea Flower Show went to the M&G Garden, for which Helifix supplied some vital, but unseen, components. The garden, which was on various levels, was inspired by an abandoned Maltese quarry and features monumental blocks of limestone planted with evergreens, perennials, grasses and ground cover unique to the dry Mediterranean island.

The two largest stone clad towers required support but the Royal Horticultural Society does not allow major excavations to be carried out, tree roots had to be avoided and whatever means of support was used had to be removed once the show was over.

The Helifix Solution

The garden contractors, Crocus, turned to Helifix who supplied 12 Dixie micro-piles to support the two large limestone-clad steel columns. These circular hollow section piles offered the ideal solution as they could be rapidly installed, required no excavations or spoil removal and would be easy to remove when the garden was dismantled.

The Dixie micro-piles were simply screwed vertically into the ground, using a hydraulic drive head, at the specified spacings and calculated torque. The helical lead section is installed first followed by extension sections until they reached the load bearing strata.
Each installed pile was then fitted with an engineered flat top plate bracket. These in turn were connected to specially made steel frames that provided the bases of the two stone clad towers, which were then constructed in sections.
Once the show was over the stone columns were dismantled and the Dixie micro-piles were extracted from the ground by simply being ‘unscrewed’.

The Dixie micro-piles, which were easy to install and remove, provided reliable and economical support to the stone clad steel columns on this award-winning garden.