ONE of the biggest-selling British artists of the last 30 years has officially unveiled the artwork of the 2019 Welcome to Yorkshire garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

‘Under the Moon and Stars’ by Mackenzie Thorpe is inspired by Mark Gregory’s Gold Medal-winning design which celebrates Yorkshire’s rich industrial heritage and the beauty of its canals and waterways.

The Yorkshire scene shows an adult and child standing under a star and moonlit sky, in a field of wildflowers, beside a canal, looking out to the hills rising in the distance.

The 2019 Welcome to Yorkshire show garden has been created in partnership with waterways and wellbeing charity Canal & River Trust. The highlight of the garden is an authentically-built canal, complete with flowing water and genuine lock gates from Huddersfield Narrow Canal gifted by the Trust. It also includes a towpath and a lock keeper’s lodge with a garden and vegetable patch.

It’s the 10th year that the tourism organisation has attended the flower show, where it showcases the county to an international audience.

Mackenzie Thorpe said: “I am a Yorkshire man through and through and as an artist the whole county is a never-ending source of inspiration. Every season brings something different and when the flowers bloom it adds an extra dimension. I was really pleased to see the lock and canal incorporated into the garden design, acknowledging Yorkshire’s industrial heritage, which adds to the natural beauty of our countryside and it was my task was to try and incorporate it all in one single painting.

“I visualised the garden as if it really was in Yorkshire, with rolling hills in the background and imagined being in that landscape, on the edge of a canal, standing under the moon and stars, taking in the glorious peace and beauty of a summers evening, surrounded by the scent of a glorious balmy Yorkshire and reflecting on how wonderful life can be.”