YOUR wardrobe is the very epitome of now. As is your carefully decorated home.
Even your opinions are of the moment. Everything in your life is perfectly à
la mode. But what about your garden? Are those purple alliums striking the
right note in front of that black grass? Is that bamboo over? All will be
revealed next week at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show.
This year there are about 600 exhibitors and 20 show gardens. Nearly 160,000
visitors will be lured from all over the world by big names such as Chris
Beardshaw and Diarmuid Gavin. I’ll be there – wishing my fingers were
greener and reporting on the sell-off day scrum. We will all be rewarded by
a glimpse of Alan Titchmarsh, the world’s unlikeliest sex symbol.
“Chelsea remains the world’s most influential show,” says Alex Baulkwill,
manager of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. “This is where design trends are
set.” Last year we saw the flora of New Zealand, purple was all the rage and
everyone loved irises. Before that black was back and grasses were growing
everywhere.
So what are the key plants, colours and themes for 2007? And how can you have
a little bit of Chelsea at home? “This year we will see lots of strong,
clashing colours,” says Baulkwill. “Oranges, like crocosmia, golds, like
certain achilleas, and vivid, almost-poppy reds. Purple remains popular, as
do the classic alliums. It’s more colourful this year partly because
previous shows have been slightly dark.”
This news greatly pleases Bryony Hill, the wife of sporting legend Jimmy and
author of A Compost Kind of Girl (Book Guild, £17.99). “I first
went to Chelsea when I was 9,” says Hill. “Like all little girls I loved
flowers, but that Chelsea show got me into gardens. I long for orange this
year, as it’s been neglected for too long.”
Fortnum & Mason is celebrating its 300th anniversary with its first show
garden, which has been designed by Robert Myers. Formal yew hedging and
pleached trees scream English-ness, and Georgian aesthetics abound. This
grand formal look can easily be done in small gardens, even patio gardens.
Planting, including cat mint and salvias, will encourage bees.
Orange might be among the brightest colours, but green is undoubtedly the
biggest issue. The RHS imposes strict rules on the exhibitors; officials
from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs inspect gardens
and products. Baulkwill says: “All timber must be FSC (Forest Stewardship
Council) certified, and there must be no wild-dug plants. All our water
comes from the borehole drilled on site last year.”
This year the Environment Agency has given the RHS permission to extract
double the 4,400 gallons it was allowed to extract each day at last year’s
show. The borehole, which is 100 metres deep, will provide the water for all
the plants, flowers and show gardens, as well as for all the public
washrooms.
Elsewhere the Marshalls Sustainability Garden, the show garden from this
year’s sponsor, includes a reed bed for filtering grey water as well as
sculptures with solar panels. That’s not something you find on most streets.
“No, but consumers are factoring sustainability and ethical and social
values into their gardens,” says Baulkwill. “Being green is no longer a
trend, it’s a given.”
“Low maintenance” is a term often used to sell gardens to potential property
purchasers. It conjures up images of wet gravel scattered with miserable
pots. It needn’t be so. “I garden in drought country,” says Hill, “so I
don’t molly-coddle my plants; I water them in and let them earn their keep.
I underplant and mulch to retain moisture and stop weeds stealing nutrients.
Avoid annuals, as they suck up water and nutrients. It’s easy to be green in
the garden.”
Now that homes, like appliances, are to be assessed for their energy rating,
perhaps the day is not too far away when our gardens are also rated. Then a
green garden won’t just be a thing of beauty but of community pride.
Tickets: 0870 9063780 (RHS members), 0870 9063781 (nonmembers). Or online
at www.rhs.org.uk/chelsea/tickets.asp Tomorrow in the Times Magazine:
Stephen Anderton’s guide to Chelsea
For more previews of this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, go to
timesonline.co.uk/chelseaflowershow
SPADEWORK
A garden can add up to 17 per cent to the value of a property – on average
this amounts to at least £35,000, according to a survey by
Propertyfinder.com.
93 per cent of buyers are put off by a neglected front lawn.
By contrast, 75 per cent of people are instantly attracted to a property with
a well-tended front garden.
30 per cent of sellers fail to tend their garden regularly.
57 per cent of people rate a garden as essential in their choice of property.
Only 3 per cent would rather not have a garden of any kind.
A well-tended garden is “the ultimate value add”, according to Nicholas
Leeming, director of Propertyfinder.com. He notes a tendency to think that
merely having a garden is enough to attract buyers. “The reality is that 84
per cent of people are put off by bad decor in a house, and this sentiment
extends to the garden.”
Source: Propertyfinder.com surveyed 984 buyers and sellers online in April
2007
TOP TIPS
GREEN GARDENING
MOST gardeners feel themselves to be in tune with nature, but trying to buck
up the sweet peas can lead one down the garden path to Baby-Bio. Gardening
with man-made products has been around for only 50 years or so, but
civilisation has been cultivating plants using natural methods for
centuries. It makes little sense to upset your own private eco-system, and
you don’t have to drill a borehole for a clearer conscience. From banishing
fly sprays to installing your own wormery, there are options that make it
easier to use nature’s own tactics.
First of all, that Baby-Bio. Replace synthetic plant food with a mixture of
nettle and comfrey. It reeks to high heaven, but your flowers will flourish.
To help growth, practise crop rotation in vegetable patches. Fallow areas
look ugly in decorative gardens, but for kitchen gardens it is a simple way
to restock the soil with nutrients.
Insecticide-free pest control is crucial, especially on anything you might
eat, including herbs. Prevention is better than cure, and companion
planting, like putting anise next to coriander, can draw aphids away from
fruit. Chrysanthemums are very good at this, as are sunflowers. The same
substance that attracts good insects to leaves and flowers can also repel
bad ones. By combining a mixture of native plants, flowers and vegetables
you allow the wildlife to find its own balance of expansion and control.
Grease bands around tree trunks protect against moths, ants and earwigs, and
copper tape around beds and pots discourages slugs and snails. Brightly
coloured, cup-shaped flowers are the best for attracting bees and
butterflies to help with pollination.
The ladybird is helpful because of its predatory relationship with
plant-eating insects. If your garden has a healthy ladybird colony, you can
further encourage it with ladybird food (£1.95 from Agralan), left out in a
shady hidey hole. If you haven’t seen any red dotted wings lately, you can
grow your own ladybirds. No, this isn’t a children’s toy – you can buy kits
with a breeding box and instruction manual; you then order the eggs and 30
days later, hey presto!, 20 little ladybirds emerge. The eggs need
monitoring throughout the month and the kit costs £24.95 from Agralan. If
you end up with too many, place fresh bay leaves in the areas you want them
to leave, like door frames.
You can up the species count of your fast-growing micro-farm with a wormery.
This seething mass of tiny critters stays inside a plastic bin and devours
organic matter, leaving a waste product that is a brilliant soil
conditioner.The aptly titled Can-O-Worms costs £60 from
www.wigglywigglers.com. If that makes you squirm, all you need for a simple
compost bin is food and green waste, plus the odd sprinkling of water.
Compost bins must be placed on a natural surface, like a flower bed, so
moisture can seep out and bugs can move in and out. It will need stirring to
aerate it. Powdered natural compost accelerator speeds up decomposition, as
does a handful of yarrow.
Finally, a water butt is the easiest way to conserve water. A barrel placed
beneath the drainpipe will catch run-off water from the roof, and gardens
respond much better to rainwater than tap water, which is treated with
chlorine. Plastic barrels, such as the Sankey Standard Water Butt (£20 at
Homebase), are available from most garden centres; for something smarter,
try a Suffolk Barrel, which is wood with a brass tap (£99 from
www.suffolkbarrel.co.uk).
When it comes to eco-chic, it’s clear that gardens have natural talent.
