Smashing the grass ceiling!
The Chelsea Flower Show’s been attacked for being dominated by men. Not this year! Meet the green-fingered women taking over
PICTURE a garden made just for you. A stream meanders through lush greenery, overhung by weeping willows. At the centre, a bronze pavilion curves in sinuous lines inspired by nature. Tread carefully over smooth stepping stones to find a seat from which you can admire the calm space.
It’s a far cry from the manicured lawns and uniform blooms that thoughts of a flower show might ordinarily conjure. And, crucially, in this garden — believed to be the first at Chelsea Flower Show to have been designed specifically for women — there’s not a rosy petal in sight. ‘We have no pink flowers!’ says Jo Thompson firmly. ‘I didn’t want it to be floaty, girly, pretty-pretty.’
Instead, as one of the country’s most in- demand garden designers and a Chelsea gold medal winner, she was inspired by the ‘strong, successful’ women she knows and works with.
‘I would say they are mid to late 40s, successful, have children and careers and manage them very well, and are interested in their gardens with strong feelings about design.’ How apt, too, since 2018 is being heralded as the year of the woman at Chelsea, the world’s most prestigious flower show.
Only three women have won as solo designer of the Best in Show garden since the top prize was first awarded in
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1984. And as recently as 2015, Chelsea faced criticism over the lack of women taking part.
At the time, Sue Biggs, directorgeneral of the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), said: ‘There are a huge number of extremely talented female garden designers out there, but for some reason a disproportionately small number apply to design show gardens at our worldfamous flower show.’
More recently, designer Patricia Fox said: ‘Sponsors all want to win a gold medal and that can lead to a closed shop of mainly male designers who have won one in the past.’
But change is in the air, with a record 13 women selected to design gardens that will compete for medals this year, against 15 men. That’s the most female designers to date.
Will visitors notice any difference? Jo Thompson, 49, created her first garden at Chelsea in 2009: ‘The first few years, I was oblivious that there were barely any other women. Apart from the fact the loos were always really ropey, it didn’t cross my mind until somebody else pointed it out!
‘I think gardens at Chelsea have been masculine spaces because there have been a lot of male designers, so you get strong, geometric spaces. I prefer more movement.’
SoWHY are women now blossoming at Chelsea? The industry is dominated at grassroots level by women, who make up roughly 70 per cent of The Society of Garden Designers’ 1,000- plus members, while women have competed in different areas since the very first Chelsea Flower Show in 1913 (when Miss M. C. Troyte-Bullock won a silver cup for her Cape Pelargoniums).
Sarah Eberle, who won Best in Show in 2007, believes it’s not a question of a glass (or, better, grass) ceiling holding women back.
‘I never met a glass ceiling myself. It’s based on skill rather than anything else,’ she says. ‘As an industry, I think it’s a bit like chefs. You have a lower tier of predominately women, and the well-known chefs — not all, but the majority — tend to be men.’
The reality behind all those stunning Chelsea gardens is, she says, ‘an amazing concentration and commitment of time’.
‘And I think that’s a lot of the reason — is it worth all that hassle? They call Chelsea “the marriagebreaker” because so often you hear contractors saying: “I’m not doing it next year, my wife will have a complete hissy fit.” I think women have a better life balance than men.’
And women, she notes, tend to be more the ‘family enablers’, often juggling work and childcare.
She has three adult daughters and, being largely self-employed throughout her career, took no maternity leave. She sometimes took them on jobs when they were very young.
‘I think that’s a ceiling that’s gone — the idea that children should be an embarrassment or that caring is unprofessional in a work environment. And my daughters like it that I’ve been able to look after myself.’
Now 61, she is having her busiest Chelsea yet, designing a cricketthemed garden for British Council India in the artisan competition category (the gardens fall into three categories: the spectacular ‘ show’ gardens; popular ‘ artisan’ gardens; and ‘space to grow’ gardens, to give visitors take-home ideas).
She sees a ‘rolling effect’, where women, inspired by seeing other women compete, think: ‘I could do that.’ And, she jokes, women ‘ are particularly suited to it because they can do more than one thing at a time, which you need at Chelsea’.
Preparation is gruelling: the ten show gardens, which hold the most high- profile spots on the Main Avenue, boast budgets of hundreds of thousands of pounds, and can involve 50 people working on each
one. By this point, Chelsea, which opens in two weeks, has taken over the lives of its designers. Even the show gardens must be built from scratch in just 19 days. Jo Thompson, one of the three women designing in the show garden category this year, along with Sarah Prince and Hay- Joung Hwang, says: 'It's 7am starts on site. Me and a couple of the girls who've worked with me walk home eating our takeaways at midnight, covered in mud.' Landscaping teams that build the gardens can be predominately male, but her ten-strong planting team for her garden for Wedgwood 'is all women. It's not like boys are banned, it's just happened over the years. 'They are garden designers, landscape architects. They take time off, leave their families and do 12-hour days (at least) for the love of it.' She started showing when her two children, now in their late teens, were still young: ' I was lucky my parents could look after the children when they were smaller,' she says. Chelsea's organiser the RHS has always encouraged women, she says, but adds: ' You do have to be quite confident. It's a public forum and you're judged by your peers and are open to public scrutiny, so maybe that's not everybody's choice. It's a bit like childbirth: if you understood the pain you'd never do it. But I knew I wanted to take on this challenge.' Sarah Prince, 37, is tipped to be the first woman to win the Best in Show award since Sarah Eberle. Price is back at Chelsea after five years away, in which she had a son, who turns five in Chelsea week, and a daughter, two.
She notes: ‘There’s a general trend toward men sharing childcare, and if it wasn’t for my husband, who is a writer, agreeing to look after my children for most of May, I wouldn’t be able to do Chelsea.
‘I also think there are more opportunities, such as the RHS competitions, which mean you can get a foothold at a younger age, which is fantastic.’
She thinks these can help women become established. ‘Starting out, I wouldn’t have gone to a corporate company and said: “Please can you sponsor me.” But having these competitions, you don’t have to ask — you just have to put yourself forward in a competition format, so it’s more accessible.’
She’s keen not to stereotype women as unwilling to ask for corporate funding, but adds: ‘I think it all ties into the female-male gender gap.’
Her 2012 offering, a ravishingly romantic meadow that drew on her fine art background, won a gold medal. This year, her garden for M&G Investments will ‘celebrate light and colour’, featuring plants from Mediterranean regions, earth walls and reclaimed tiles. ‘Chelsea is the catwalk of gardening,’ she says. ‘You want to show plants looking at their best. They deserve the spotlight.’
That means swaddling some in heated glass houses and even fleecy tents, to grow perfect specimens.
But pressure mounts as designers wrestle with living plants and the changeable British weather.
Jo Thompson remembers 2013’s cold, damp spring had a huge impact. ‘All the gardens looked very green and people said: “This is a trend.”
No, it’s not — nothing’s come into flower!’
‘You have to have everything planned to the tiniest detail,’ says Sarah Eberle. But that doesn’t always stop things from going wrong.
‘Last year I had a cactus about 7ft tall; cost me a small fortune. It was a beauty. As the contractors brought it round, it fell off and exploded like a melon!’
No wonder many designers operate on the ‘heir and a spare’ principle — meaning a back-up for every plant.
For the Monaco garden Sarah Eberle created at Chelsea in 2011, she placed a glass surround around a swimming pool. Then . . .
‘There was this really loud crack. I turned round and a sheet of glass had just imploded. It was Friday night and we were being judged on the Monday. Fortunately, the guy fitting the glass said: “I’ll ring the boss.” They kept their factory open and made us a new sheet overnight.’ These days, she notes: ‘I tend to be the mother of Chelsea to anybody who has a problem.’
One year, a garden was struggling because only half their lavender was in flower. ‘I said: “Buy dried lavender in bunches, put secateurs around the bushes and stage it so it looks like it’s being harvested.”
‘It’s creative thinking; how to make a story work.’
The visitors (168,000 every year) add another variable. Sarah Price remembers how one blithely ignored the ropes around her 2012 garden. ‘ They went over the rope, then two ropes, saying, “What a beautiful garden”, and just kept walking. I was thinking: “You’ve got to stop now!” ’
Instead, the visitor ended up in an ornamental pond.
But most visitors make all the late nights and early starts worth it.
Jo Thompson says: ‘ One year, an elderly lady asked what these four plants were. She said: “I like how they’re put together, I can do that on my pension.” To me, that’s better than any medal. That’s why I do it — to give people ideas.’
Hay-Joung Hwang remembers how her much-praised 2016 garden at Chelsea, a floral dream in lilac and white, moved one famous visitor in particular — the Queen, who said it had reminded her of her mother.
Certainly, the job is about much more than being green-fingered.
Hwang’s ‘eco-city’ show garden for LG Electronics this year, designed to rethink inner- city living, boasts a vertical vegetable and herb farm fed by fish waste nutrients.
Hwang, 39, is ‘ incredibly excited’ about women swelling the ranks at Chelsea. ‘The key is confidence. I’m so pleased to see so many women joining this beautiful event.’
Dr Catherine MacDonald is designing a garden for Seedlip drinks, celebrating the pea. Every plant will be from the pea family, including the trees, with water features coloured by dye made from sweetpea flowers and a ‘pea-vilion’ structure that’s a ‘shrine to the pea’.
Now in her 12th year of involvement at Chelsea, the gold medal winner, 44, has been inspired by other women along the way. When she started, ‘there were lots of women doing a lot of the planting, but [they were] not necessarily the designers.
‘Sarah [Eberle] was on a par with the men. You didn’t notice the garden because she was a woman, you noticed it because of what she did.’
ONMAIN Avenue, men still dominate the most prestigious show garden category, designing seven of those ten gardens.
But that could change as talent rises up the ranks, such as Tamara Bridge and Kate Savill, both 30, whose artisan garden for gin-makers Warner Edwards will feature beefriendly plants and old stone-walling inspired by the distillery’s farm.
Tamara worked as a tree surgeon — useful when dealing with landscaping teams. She says. ‘I’m a fully trained chainsaw operator, which is quite handy to pull out on site.’
Kate adds: ‘We have a pretty much all-girl planting team, and last year we were doing heavy stuff. That’s the beauty of Chelsea, everyone is chipping in.’
And that’s why, despite ferocious standards, designers speak fondly of being part of the Chelsea ‘family’.
Sadly, Sarah Eberle’s husband Robert, a farmer, died last year, but everyone pitched in to help her.
‘At Chelsea last year, I only had to stand still for ten seconds and I’d have five people around me. “Can I do something? Can I help?” It’s amazing, the Chelsea community.’
Tamara agrees. ‘ When you get to the core of the industry, generally what I’ve found is that they’re welcoming, they’re like: “Come on in.” And that’s really nice.
‘It gives you the balls to stand up in front of people who aren’t so supportive and go: “Do you know what? I’m here, and I’m doing it and I’m really loving it.”’
‘ It’s that last sweep away of dust when the garden is finished,’ says her co-designer Kate, that’s the best bit: ‘The first moment you can stand back and say: “Now that’s a garden!” ’