Leeann set out two years ago to create an elegant solution to unsightly, weighty hanging planters that plague garden enthusiasts everywhere. The Garden Pendant Collection by Duchess Designs is a collection of lightweight, custom-crafted resin hanging planters designed with a built-in water reservoir for easy plant care. The Pendants are distinguished with rich watercolor motifs originally hand painted by Leeann-and inspired by the beauty of the coast and the gardens where she lives part-time. Along with Julia Racklowe, the Sponsorship Officer, the Highlands Sea Glass© hanging planter design was chosen from the Garden Pendant Collection's Portrait line to donate to the town of Bury St Edmunds.

"My passion is plants," said Leeann Lavin. "Gardens and garden art are at the center of what I do. In the course of designing with plants, I never found a lightweight hanging planter that was elegant enough to hang in my home or to offer to my garden design clients," she said. "So I set out to design a line of hanging planters that would provide a healthy and easy-to-maintain living environment for the plants that would also complement the look of a garden room-indoors or outside.

Little did Lavin know that her two-year journey would take her to England and back to her British ancestry. The Duchess Designs logo incorporates Lavin's British family's gardening heritage, her early ancestors were gardeners and farmers. The seal from her great grandparents' marriage license-registered at the Church of St Mary's in London, now restored and new home to the Museum of Garden History-was borrowed in part for the ---------------Duchess Designs logo.

The townspeople of Bury St Edmunds accepted the donation with great pleasure and invited Lavin to visit the quaint village of Bury St Edmunds as this year's guest-of-honor at the Bury in Bloom awards ceremony held at The Athenaeum on Angel Hill on Sunday, July 18.

The St Bury Edmunds's Bury in Bloom Contest was a splendid success. The eighteenth annual competition bloomed in full grandeur, boasting a summer floral display with more hanging planters than ever before.

Leeann received a warm reception fit for a queen, or in Lavin's case, a 'duchess!' "It was an enriching garden visit that brought my work as a garden designer full circle and filled me with a deep sense of joy," said Lavin who is also the Director of Public Affairs at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. "It was wonderful to see a community carrying on an important historical tradition and with a real commitment to the beauty of garden art. Not only was the town a picture-postcard of floral beauty, but the historical Abbey Gardens and the town's 'Hidden Gardens' are not-to-be-missed inspiration for any garden enthusiast to admire."