Frome at Chelsea Flower Show 2013

I wrapped up warm for this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. The show happens at that time of year when the weather can really do anything. Sometimes it is so hot you are desperate for any hint of shade. Or it can be so cold that constant hot drinks are the only way to keep warm. Fortunately the loos are always very nice at Chelsea.

This year’s cold spring made it tough for the nurseries who supply the show. It is always a delicate balancing act getting plants to be at their peak for the end of May. Each spring is different and this year it was about a month late. Most years the gardens are perfect regardless of the preceeding weather but this year was different. I saw several gardens with flowers still stubbornly in bud and blossom trees without blossom. I found it rather charming, however, to see show gardens that were closer to everyday garden reality instead of impossible perfection.

One local nursery who struggled valiantly with the weather to supply Chelsea is Barters, in Chapmanslade. Jamie Dunstan’s ‘As Nature Intended’ garden was designed around plants that we rely on in our daily lives. Barley is an important ingredient in many beer drinkers’ daily lives and it was used as the ground plane in Jamie’s bold and uncluttered design. The cold weather meant the crop was not flowering in time for the show but it still created a calm, green foundation for the well-balanced and restrained design.

Jamie Dunstan's garden

The Barters barley was growing on Main Avenue, the central area for the large Show Gardens. Prince Harry’s Sentebale Garden, Ulf Nordfell’s Laurent Perrier Garden and Christopher Bradley-Hole’s Daily Telegraph Garden were all within hailing distance. The Telegraph Garden was another design with a predominantly green colour scheme but the subtle variations of height, texture and form created a mesmerising and tranquil tableau.

Telegraph garden

If subtlety and restraint were the watchwords for the Main Avenue gardens, the Australian Flemings Garden, which was at the Avenue’s far end, was an exuberant contrast. Featuring plants from across Australia, the garden was an exciting design that even included the sounds of the Australian bush. I have family in Australia and have been bushwalking there many times. I can tell you that this garden really did capture the drama of the Australian countryside. It deserved the Best in Show award, although this did generate controversy among some of the old guard.

The Flemings garden

I find that you have to take Chelsea show gardens with a pinch of salt. Most of these gardens are not possible in real life. They have been dressed up to create eye-popping impact for one week in May. But, Chelsea is a rich source of ideas that you can interpret for any private garden. Prince Harry’s Sentebale garden had some beautiful hummocky groundcover planting that included a plant new to me, Leptinella squallida or Green Brass Buttons. It was planted with other groundcovers and accents of Forget-Me-Nots. This kind of groundcover planting could replace your lawn, much less maintenance and more eye-catching!

Sentebale Garden groundcover planting

Chelsea on Press Day is great for spotting famous faces. Ringo Starr was the most familiar face I saw but there were many others, including TV chefs Jamie Oliver, Raymond Blanc and Antonio Carluccio. Outdoor cooking was a popular theme and that smoky barbecue aroma is hard to resist on a fine summer’s evening.

Ringo Starr on the Water Aid garden

A couple of faces I recognised because they were from Frome, rather than the silver screen, were John Collins and Jo Illsley. John Collins’ company Straysparks had a stand exhibiting his ornamental wrought iron work. His garden trellis had been shortlisted for an RHS Product of 2013 Award. Jo, who runs the Mells Walled Garden, supplied the lovely planting that graced the stand.

Straysparks' John Collins

My favourite Chelsea garden this year didn’t win a gold medal, but my opinion often differs from the RHS Judges. The Cloudy Bay garden was in the Fresh Garden category, where designers are asked to think outside the box. I didn’t think the design was especially innovative, although the use of rammed earth as a walling material is unusual.  The garden elements were beautifully balanced, however, and the design had that special quality that makes you want to explore the garden further.

Cloudy Bay garden

Of course the sad reality at Chelsea is that the public are not allowed to enter the gardens. For Health and Safety reasons, I expect. So your garden may not be a Chelsea beauty but at least you can get out and enjoy it. And perhaps a little touch of inspiration from our local Chelsea stars will add some extra glamour!

www.straysparks.co.uk

www.thewalledgardenatmells.co.uk

www.barters.co.uk

Too many Chelseas?

For more than ten years I have been visiting the annual jamboree that is Chelsea Flower Show.  Some years I have just gone for the evening. In other years I have endured the long slog conferred by a full day ticket. In 2004 I had the pleasure of helping Nicola Lesbirel build her gold medal winning Laurent Perrier garden. The best way to see Chelsea might be before the gardens are complete. Many show gardens have some last minute addition that manages to destroy the harmony of what, up until that point, looked great.

During this last ten years I have taken the plunge of leaving a career in marketing of many years standing to start my own fledgling garden design business. My early trips to Chelsea were with uncritical, admiring eyes. As I progressed through the course I began to appreciate that a Chelsea Show Garden is not an actual garden but a tableau, something to be viewed for a few days in May rather than lived in throughout the year. The emphasis is on Show rather than Garden.

So now I go to Chelsea expecting a show, something spectacular or provoking or just plain fun. Some years my expectations are met, or even exceeded, some years I am disappointed.  Standout gardens for me over the years have included Shao Fan’s 2008 garden. Unusually, it was set well into the ground and appeared as though it had been excavated from the bare earth.

Shao Fan's 2008 garden

In the same year Arabella Lennox-Boyd’s Daily Telegraph Garden was a vision of cool, calm beauty with a rhythmic stone path that swung along the surface of a pool. In retrospect, 2008 was a vintage year as I was also impressed by Haruko Seki and Makato Saito’s shimmering garden of pure lines and restrained, textural planting in that year. The lack of actual flowers in the garden was said to be the reason they were denied a gold medal.

On the whole, 2012 was a disappointing year. The Main Avenue gardens, the most pretigious spots, were mostly a collection of recti-linear geometry based designs that we have seen so often that they are now almost a Chelsea cliché. Sarah Price’s Telegraph garden was an honourable exception, with delicately pretty planting softening a stylised, jagged limestone pavement and copper edged pool. The most original Main Ave garden, was Jihae Hwang’s Korean DMZ Forbidden Garden. On a notoriously tricky, triangular plot, Jihae Hwang concocted a garden that had the most powerful sense of place. It was mysterious. You could only see tantalising glimpses inside the garden, but that was okay because, unusually, members of the general public were allowed onto the garden to explore. The tumbling planting made it feel romantic but the helmet, shells and wire were poignant reminders of what the garden represented, the Korean Demilitarized Zone. The watch-tower created a strong structural presence in the garden, so often achieved through countless, modernist garden pavillions aimlessly loitering at the end of many Main Ave show gardens over the years. In this garden, the structure effortlessly communicated the concept while performing an important design function. The garden worked well as a spatial design, it had interesting planting and an important message. Why can’t all show gardens be like this?

Jihae Hwang's Korean DMZ garden