TOBY BUCKLAND
Toby defends the medal-winning rocks at Chelsea
MATURE conifers and big boulders were in fashion at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show this year, as was the continuing trend for designs based on rock-strewn landscapes redolent of what travel agents might describe as the ‘undiscovered Mediterranean’.
Out were the crowd-pleasing and cosy herbaceous borders of old and in was the haunting beauty of rough-hewn rocks and wildflowers.
These wild and innovative designs were never going to be to everyone’s taste. Time and time again while filming, I heard visitors exclaim: “That’s not a garden!” and question the judges’ wisdom for awarding such designs a gold medal or best-in-show.
However, I can see exactly why they scooped the top honours as, put simply, designers such as Darren Hawkes, Charlotte Harris and James Basson brought new plants and an innovative style to SW11.
Not only did their gardens look different but they also pulled off that most difficult of tricks: suspension of disbelief, making their designs look like they’d been there for years. This was done with roughhewn edges on stone-work and artful planting that despite arriving in a van just days before, looked like it had turned up as seed years before on the wind.
While I’m fond of traditional gardens, in design terms they represent a long, welltrodden road that’s hard to improve.
The largest chunk of the judges’ marks are awarded for the ambition of the design. If they’re not ground-breaking, they have to be faultless in all other areas to meet the gold-medal standard.
Besides, controversy surrounding medals has always been part of the RHS
Chelsea Flower Show fun, and like judging any work of art it’s tricky, as beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.
It also takes a long time for trends at Chelsea to reach our gardens at home. That’s not to say many people will recreate the gravel-and-rock-speckled landscapes from Chelsea 2017, but perhaps the message of these designs will be taken up by more gardeners: that wild flowers matter and wilderness is good for the health of the planet as well as for our spirits.
“Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder”