Rolls-Royce announced a new competition today, unfortunately reserved solely for UK residents. The British car maker wants to enhance its Wildlife Garden and it’s asking for help from naturalists and young designers, aka children. Rolls-Royce had a similar contest dedicated to children last year as well, when they asked the youngest of us to send in their most awesome car designs. Now, it’s all about wildlife.
“We established our Wildlife Garden when the Home of Rolls-Royce was first created in 2003, as a dedicated area within our 42-acre site that would be deliberately left in its natural state. Over the intervening years, we have seen changes in approaches to conservation, notably the emphasis on ‘rewilding’ and we wanted to enhance our own project in line with these developments. We also felt it was important to respond to people’s renewed engagement with and concern for local environment, prompted by the pandemic by enhancing the Wildlife Garden’s features and habitat,” said Torsten Muller-Otvos, CEO, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars.
To this end, the company is asking children aged 5-11 to suggest features that would enhance the Wildlife Garden and its habitat value to local flora and fauna. The design should include things like pollinator-friendly plants, trees and flowers but apart from that there’s a lot of freedom regarding the design of seats, shelters, sculptures and other items.
“We believe it is absolutely appropriate to involve children in this endeavour. Preserving wildlife and habitat really matters to them because it is their future at stake. As our recent international competition to design the Rolls-Royce of the future vividly demonstrated, children see the world with exceptional clarity, imagination and openness; they bring forward ideas that we, as adults, too easily overlook, dismiss or never even consider. I am intrigued to see what they come up with!” added Torsten Muller-Otvos.
So, what’s in it for the winner? A chauffeur will pick you up in a Rolls-Royce and bring you to Goodwood where you’ll officially open the garden you personally designed. On top of that, the winner and the runner-up will also receive a unique 3D computer-generated image of the Wildlife Garden, with their feature in pride of place, created by the Rolls-Royce Bespoke Design Team with the same software used for designing customers’ cars.
