Perhaps it was meant to be: with so many of the gardens at this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show concentrating on drought-friendly plants and how to save water, the heavens opened. Yet, despite the appalling weather in the week running up to the show, the judges considered it to be an excellent year.

The world had certainly come to Chelsea — with gardens from countries as far-flung as New Zealand, Australia, Lebanon and Gabon — yet, perversely, I sometimes yearned for a good, old-fashioned English garden. Chris Beardshaw’s gold medal-winning recreation of the Thomas Mawson/Gertrude Jekyll garden at Boveridge House in Dorset was just this, and it was a big crowd puller. He had even saved some of last year’s fallen leaves from Boveridge and strewn them beneath the plants to add authentic detail.

So, what was new? For a start, most of the designers had resisted the temptation to overdo it. So often in previous years, the show gardens have come across as theatrical tableaux, with too many ideas. This year, we were given gardens you could actually live with.

Things move slowly in gardening, but at least the nostalgia which permeated last year’s gardens was less in evidence — I only spotted one old-fashioned bicycle propped against a wall. Cottage vegetable plots were another popular feature 12 months ago, but they, too, have been consigned to the compost bin.

The naturalistic approach, as opposed to rigid formality, was still there, however, as was the return to greenery (yes, green is a colour). Planting in the Bradstone garden was a tapestry of greens, and it was the dominant colour in the 4head garden, designed by Marney Hall. A lovely woodland glade, immaculately executed and beautifully planted, it was a surprise it didn’t win a gold medal, but it certainly proved popular with the public.

There were plenty of contemporary elements on display, but they were used in an approachable way, with much mixing of traditional and modern, which was often softened by the planting. This was grown-up modernism, as shown by the Savills garden, inspired by Mies van der Rohe, rather than uncompromising bandwagon trendiness. It is as if we have got used to the idea of a “contemporary” garden and no longer feel the need to shout about it.

As for the plants, the Queen got it right by appearing on Monday in a purple outfit, which was quite the colour of the year. There were a few contrasts, with an occasional dash of orange, red and pink thrown into the mix, but overall the palette tended to be more subtle and toning. Berry colours were everywhere, from imperial purple to raspberry, crimson and rust. These were most beautifully shown in the sublime planting on Tom Stuart-Smith’s garden, which, deservedly, won best in show.

Shimmering above the lower layer of the Stuart-Smith planting was a haze of the golden oat, Stipa gigantea, the leitmotif plant of the year, along with the bearded iris (again, good for dry conditions) — they turned up all over the place. Other delicate plants, such as Crambe cordifolia, gave an air of lightness and transparency to the gardens, with foxgloves adding height to shadier planting schemes.

Outdoor living was again big, most resolutely in Fleming’s Nurseries garden from Australia, complete with extramural kitchen, sofas and built-in fireplace. Other hard landscaping, such as water features and buildings, tended to be formal and geometric, softened by the planting around it — Andy Sturgeon’s long, lean swimming pool, for instance, or Beardshaw’s elegant central rectangle of water.

There were plenty of lovely stone walls, but it was concrete which caught the eye as the hot hard-landscaping material, and it was used to great effect. Cleve West had several large, sculptural concrete shapes in his striking gold-medal winning garden, and Sarah Eberle’s Walking Barefoot with Bradstone — another gold — had contrasting polished and rough surfaces, which sat well with her quiet, woodland planting.

Despite the “drought”, there were plenty of water features, often combined with glass to create subtle effects and more of the transparency that we saw in the delicate planting. The beautiful These Four Walls garden, for example, had a green glass wall at the back, down which water quietly flowed.

In the Great Pavilion, I was struck as always by the amazing quality of the displays and plants. As to new introductions that caught my eye, Claire Austin had Iris ‘Badlands’, a sumptuous purple form; both Avon Bulbs and Broadleigh Gardens were showing a new scented Allium ‘Silver Spring’, which had unusual, white flowers with rosy pink centres. On Raymond Evison’s stand they were displaying the pale blue clematis ‘Ice Blue’, which is spring flowering and repeats at end of summer.

At Jekka’s Herb Farm it was good to see scarlet poppies and nasturtiums adding some zing to the Great Pavilion. Both Jekka McVicar and Rosy Hardy, of Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants — an inspirational display of covetable perennials — got gold medals for their stands. That makes 11 consecutive golds each, which beats Beth Chatto’s long-standing record. Let’s hear it for the ladies.



Additional reporting by Caroline Donald

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