A quirk of fate led a team of astronomers, a horticulturalist, designer and landscape construction experts to develop gardens based on esoteric astrophysical phenomena with the general aim of exciting interest in science in a large and non-traditional audience whilst promoting the work of the National Schools’ Observatory. The first garden we developed won a good medal at RHS Tatton in 2013 and the second, most ambitious and latest of these, another gold medal and the coveted ‘Best in Class’ at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, 2015. This talk will tell the story of the development of the gardens in the context of the astrophysical phenomena on which they were based, and detail the wide impact this unusual undertaking has had.