The National Trust is a household name with over 500 years of heritage and expertise. The organisation wanted to address the decline of the garden capital, raise the profile of horticulture and become an employer of choice. To do this, it needed a campaign that would support its internal and external ambitions, celebrating employees, parks and gardens. The challenge was how could it look at the future of horticulture without losing its history?

‘Write the Next Chapter’ would tell the stories of the gardens, showing how their history impacts the present, how gardening teams work now, and how they will keep them alive for the future. The visuals had to reflect their power to shape a new generation of National Trust legacies – so the photography needed to be as much of a work of art as the gardens themselves. Gardeners were photographed with their equipment, spotlighted as proud custodians, with lighting making them look like unique Renaissance paintings.

Each image had a two-part headline structure such as ‘Proud history. Bold future’ that would show the dual message the organisation was trying to convey. Content was multi-channel and could sit on social media and internal communications platforms as well as be used for events. The launch, the week of the Chelsea Flower Show, generated a huge increase in traffic to the Gardens & Parklands landing page and a more than 500% rise in searches for its jobs page.