Meet the designers’ favourites
These star plants are worthy of a gold medal on their own! Val Bourne picks the prettiest plants to see at Chelsea
These star plants are worthy of a gold medal on their own! Val Bourne picks the prettiest
For many gardeners, Chelsea marks the start of the gardening year, but it’s still relatively early for most plants. Some, like peonies and irises, can be forced on by a couple of weeks in a warm greenhouse with no ill effects, but those such as alliums and aquilegias reliably flower in May and therefore regularly feature in Chelsea show gardens. The interesting bit is how different designers use these plants to create atmosphere and mood. There’s always an abundance of mauve and purple in early May and touches of warm orange create a vivid contrast. Favourite touch-paper plants include chocolate, brown and tall orange bearded irises, swirling geums including ‘Totally Tangerine’ and russet fibre-optic grass-like plants such as Carex testacea and Libertia peregrinans. If there’s an abundance of deep blues you’ll often get a of froth of acid-yellow euphorbias to give those blues a flash of extra radiance. Here and on the following pages I’ve outlined some of the key plants you’ll see in Chelsea’s spectacular show gardens, plus a few ideas for what to plant them with.
1 Paeonia lactiflora ‘Kansas’
Peonies are a constant and ‘Kansas’ came to my attention in Stoke City’s 2014 show garden (left). Often dismissed as plain pink by the undiscerning, the vivid petals are overlaid by a blue, almost-electric shimmer. These blowsy peonies are usually softened by airy grasses, such as Deschampsia cespitosa.
Luciano Giubbilei’s iconic 2009 mixture included satin-red peony ‘Buckeye Belle’ sitting among feathery bronze fennel and sultry-red astrantias punctuated by royal-blue spires of salvia. H90cm (3ft) S50cm (20in)
2 Cirsium heterophyllum
Thistle-like flowers add specks of colour and designers tend to weave them through a whole area to draw the eye. Bright pink C. heterophyllum pops up consistently but it’s not the first thistle to wow visitors: the maroon bobbles of C. rivulare made a huge impact 20 years ago. This is a tighter plant, whereas C. heterophyllum tends to run around. Both are bee and butterfly magnets and the buds have a lovely black diamond pattern. H1.2m (4ft) S60cm (2ft)
3 Euphorbia palustris
There’s always a lot of acid-yellow froth at Chelsea and euphorbias are renowned for providing spring zing, especially among blues and purples. Most commonly seen is billowing E. palustris – a taller May-flowering meadow spurge that looks particularly good with willowy, dark-blue Siberian irises or sun-bright yellow doronicum. Other designers use sun-loving Mediterranean E. characias for its felted grey foliage and architectural heads of dark-eyed yellow flowers. H1m (3ft 3in) S60cm (2ft)
4 Iris ‘Sultan’s Palace’
Often featured rising above a froth of airy flowers and grasses, this tall bearded iris is a bit of a chameleon because its buds look almost purple before the reddishbrown flowers open. It was an Andy Sturgeon favourite and he memorably teamed it with upright pale-orange verbascum ‘Clementine’ in his 2010 Daily Telegraph Garden. Verbascums with their purple anthers pick up the colour of rich-purple alliums such as ‘Purple Sensation’. H75cm (30in) S60cm (2ft)
5 Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’
This frilly-flowered geum adds a tissue-paper touch to many a Chelsea planting scheme. The tangerine flowers can be woven through blue flowers, or rise above wiry grasses. It prefers a bright situation, but geums in sorbet shades of lemon, pink and white can be used in shade too. This sterile plant flowers non-stop from May until late in the year. H60-90cm (2-3ft) S50cm (20in)
6 Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’
This deep blue Balkan sage first appeared in Marcus Barnett and Philip Nixon’s 2006 Savills Garden, mingling among royal blue irises. Since then it’s popped up time and time again because the slender spikes have an irresistible touch of fashionable black on their wiry stems. It seems to go with everything, whatever the colour. H50cm (20in) S30cm (12in)
7 Digitalis lutea
Foxgloves provide a country feel to many of the gardens and Luciano Giubbilei used this willowy, pallid-yellow perennial foxglove in his 2014 LaurentPerrier garden to add texture and form to a naturalistic planting. His subtle cream and yellow blend also included lupins ‘Chandelier’ and ‘Cashmere Cream’, but the backbone consisted of rich green foliage, with the odd touch of blue. Our native foxglove, Digitalis purpurea, also makes regular appearances at Chelsea, with the bold pink version often emerging in meadow-style plantings and paler forms in woodland shade. H90cm (3ft) H30cm (12in)
8 Anthriscus sylvestris
Umbels are always popular at Chelsea because they add a lacy delicacy to any planting scheme. The blackstemmed cultivar ‘Ravenswing’ was dubbed Chelsea cow parsley because it was used so often. Its graceful habit and domed, white flowers give a wilding look. Baltic cow parsley Cenolophium denudatum is another popular choice, more substantial than our native cow parsley it makes a good cut flower. Other designers, in need of architectural dazzle, have opted for Angelica archangelica for its strong shape and apple-green flowers. H1m (3ft 3in) S30cm (12in)
9 Colour-pop lupins
Naturally upright and available in a host of dazzling colours such as red ‘Towering Inferno’ shown here, lupins are a long-term Chelsea fixture. Their architectural spires add vibrant accents, whether bursting through silver, yellow or green neighbours such as artemisia ‘Silver Queen’ and Angelia archangelica (shown here in Chris Beardshaw’s 2013 garden for Arthritis Research) or grown in eye-catching standalone clumps. H1.2m (4ft) S60cm (2ft)
10 Asarum europaeum
Wild ginger is a must-have plant loved by garden designer Tom StuartSmith in his foliage-led Chelsea designs. The shiny green rounded leaves make for smart, eye-catching groundcover in a damp spot. Appearances at Chelsea include the Nature Ascending garden (2009), No-man’s Land garden (2014) and the Sculptor’s Picnic Garden (2015). It looks especially lovely with liriope, athyrium ferns and Caption in here hostas – as well as damp-loving plaese caption i isolepsis, left. H15cm (6in) S30cm