Nick Bailey explains how to copy Chelsea planting
It’s easy to emulate ideas from the show gardens in your own outside space
I’ve been lucky enough to attend Chelsea Flower Show, in one capacity or another, for the last 20 years. I’ve seen planting fashions come and go, trends rise and fade but certain core principles, applied by the best designers, remain consistent. I’ve slowly unpicked these over time and even had a stab at a Chelsea Garden myself last year. What I’ve learned is the principles of show planting can be carried into gardens of any shape and size. None of us have half a million pound budgets for our plots, but it’s possible to extract the best of these planting schemes and apply them to our own. Here’s how...
Structure
Many of the best show gardens rely on key structural plants to give them strong form, vistas and unity. Evergreen topiary is a great
way of doing this and ensuring year- round structure. The large box or yew balls used at Chelsea are beyond most of our budgets, but other faster-growing evergreen shrubs can be repeated at certain key points in a garden. Ideal in this role are the likes of evergreen euonymus, Lonicera nitida, Viburnum tinus or Thuja plicata.
Layers
To get a sense of richness and depth to what are relatively small gardens, show designers ‘layer’ plants. In other words, they use plants to compose a series of layered views and vistas into the garden but rarely allow visitors to experience the whole plot in a single view. By blocking views and framing others with a combination of trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants, gardens slowly reveal themselves as you walk round them, rather than getting the whole lot in a single visual hit!
Repetition
Show gardens often have a great feel of unity, and this is in no small part due to the repetition of certain key plants. Running a reliable and long-flowering herbaceous plant, such as Salvia nemorosa, throughout a whole garden or border gives it a unity of colour and, to a lesser extent, flower form. Bulbs are also a great way of doing this. Both alliums and tulips can be scattered through existing plantings to give the garden unity through spring and early summer.
Contrasting flower forms
Some of the most beautiful plantings at Chelsea are meadows of repeated herbaceous plants. What makes these work is the contrasting forms of the flowers. By pairing together spiked, rounded and umbel-shaped flowers such as lysimachia, alliums and anthriscus, designers set up a dynamic tension that makes each of the forms sing. Applying this at home is simple. Just ensure you have three to four repeating herbaceous plants, each with a different flower form, running through a bed.
Ephemerals
Show gardens can risk looking thrown together and contrived. One of the tricks to mitigate this is the use of what I’d call ephemeral plants – those annuals and biennials which seed around in normal gardens and find their own niches. Try introducing self-seeding verbascums, onopordum or Verbena bonariensis to your garden for a sense of unity, lightness and just a touch of wildness.