After a cold spring and a wet pre-show week, which resulted in late flowers
and a flurry of hairdryers aimed at coaxing the shy blooms from their buds,
the Chelsea Flower Show opened to sunshine. This year was as much about
nostalgia as gardening for the 21st century, so it was no surprise that
Julian Dowle’s recreation of a wartime country-pub garden won the award for
best show garden.
One of the strongest stories, plantwise, was the use of black, with dark
flowers and foliage a recurrent theme both in show gardens and in the Great
Pavilion. Four years ago, they were the latest thing, and you would have
thought that their popularity would be ebbing by now. But no, they are still
there in abundance.
Dark plants used widely included single and double- purple aquilegias,
deep-purple forms of Geranium phaeum and Astrantia major,
peppered with Cirsium rivulare, the unbeatable Tulipa
‘Queen of Night’ and numerous sultry irises. Among the familiar faces were a
few less well-known dark plants and some notable newcomers. The Rougham Hall
Nurseries display featured the deep- claret Centaura montana
‘Merel’, and a new inky purple Hyacinth ‘Midnight Mystique’ turned up on
several show gardens.
Some of the planting of unadulterated blacks could be a little heavy, but many
gardens lifted the tones by mixing them with silver, a combination we have
seen a lot of over the years. My favourite combinations, however, were those
that used the chartreuse greens of euphorbias to contrast against the blacks
— Capel Manor’s Garden of Night on Sunflower Street in the Great Pavilion
used the two to good effect.
Though all the black and silver was undeniably dramatic, after a while it was
nice to see a cheerful garden. Kate Frey’s Fetzer Wine garden was a riot of
oranges and yellows. Many of the plants were wild flowers, again very
popular this year. They looked fantastic but would be difficult for most
gardeners to keep in balance and looking that good. The Cancer Research UK
garden, designed by Jane Hudson and Erik De Maeijer, picked up on the same
zingy vibe and gave us a sea of perennials, saturated with uplifting
colours.
By contrast, Diarmuid Gavin’s designs for the Hanover Quay Garden, which will
eventually end up as a communal garden in a Dublin development, was all
about shapes and textures. There was a touch of Teletubby there, with
spherical white pods nestling into the sloping terrain, but nothing
outlandish. Clipped balls of box were dotted in a sea of lavender — it
wasn’t a problem that the lavender hadn’t come out, because it looked like
grass swaying in the breeze. I liked the way it softened the structure of
the buxus globes and thought the garden was beautiful, but my mum, who was
invited into the garden by Gavin, and sat in one of the pods eating her
sandwiches, worried that it would be difficult to clip the box.
Andy Sturgeon should be delighted with his garden for Merrill Lynch, which had
at its centre a striking black pond of still water in front of a modern
glass and steel “home office”. Everybody marvelled at the square holes in
the pond, which were mirrored by oak cubes of different heights that acted
as steps between the lawn and the office. The planting was extremely
accomplished, with euphorbias and agapanthus forming a carpet beneath the
silver birches. Despite his anxieties in the build-up to the show, I thought
the garden was a triumph — a real garden, rather than a showpiece.
Tom Stuart-Smith’s planting is always sublime, and he didn’t let us down in
the Laurent-Perrier garden. Once again, euphorbias added brightness to the
rectangular beds, which were planted with Iris sibericas, cirsum,
fennel and geraniums, among others. I wasn’t mad on the large urns that ran
along the side of the garden — they looked so new — but they were made for
Trentham, the Italianate garden Stuart-Smith is reviving in Staffordshire,
which was the inspiration for the show garden, and should weather over time
once in situ.
In contrast, Christopher Bradley-Hole’s In the Grove garden for his late
highness Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan al-Nahyan was perhaps a little too careful
with colour, planted mainly with peonies in white and subdued clarets and
pinks among long hedges of yew punctuated by clumps of towering bamboo. He
is a master of hard landscaping, and I loved the chunky mulch of limestone
contrasting with smooth slabs of basalt and a path of ipe wood.
Next door to each other on Main Avenue were two gardens commemorating the 60th
anniversary of the end of the second world war. In Sir Terence Conran’s
Peace garden for the Imperial War Museum, plantsman David Stevens had filled
Conran’s framework almost entirely with white-flowered plants, including
Rosa ‘Winchester Cathedral’ and Papaver orientale ‘Perry’s White’. A large
sculpture, in the form of a dovecote, complete with ceramic doves, was a
dominant feature in a garden that created an atmosphere of hope and
serenity.
To Conran’s left was the Ecover Chelsea Pensioners’ Garden, designed by the
evergreen Julian Dowle. The garden emerged not only as a sure-fire winner
with visitors, but the judges’ favourite, too. Representing “a soldier’s
dream of Blighty”, it was picture-postcard pretty, featuring a thatched pub
and patriotic red, white and blue planting, complete with scarlet corn
poppies at the front.
Indigenous plants — some might call them weeds — featured heavily in this and
many of the gardens, which will be encouraging for most of us: you can stop
trying to get rid of them and feeling guilty when you don’t. Certainly, most
of the gardens embraced all things native, rather than the exotics that have
been so popular in recent years. Although bamboos still featured widely,
tree ferns and Chusan palms had been banished to the tent.
The “natural theme” extended throughout the show, with walls, hard landscaping
and sculptures being made of slate, stone and wood. Kim Wilde’s winning
small garden gave us a slice of nature from the heart of Cumbria. Several
others, such as the Wildlife Trusts Lush Garden and the Real Rubbish garden,
concentrated on recycling and environmental concerns. This extended to the
RHS itself, which asked nurserymen to use peat substitutes for staging
plants. Perhaps the garden centres will start to take notice of this
movement and stock more peat-free composts.
This trend continued with the water features on display, including the
swimming pond in the Moat and Castle Eco-Garden. The general feeling was
very much one of understated calm and still, quiet water, rather than big
whooshy show-off displays. The Fleming’s Nurseries Float garden had the
perfect example, a sleek black lap pool that curved at one end to run up the
face of the end wall — nothing flashy, but very effective nonetheless.
Additional reporting by Caroline Donald
