Ultimate English gardens
Chelsea show a national institution
Some things never change at the Chelsea Flower Show, the world’s most famous garden show.
There is always a crush of people. You walk a little, you shuffle a little, but mostly you inch from display to display, waiting patiently for a gap to open up at the front so you can get closer and enjoy an unobstructed view for a few precious moments and the chance to snap a couple of photos.
There are always elegantly dressed men and women wearing summer hats. There are always people in the adjacent Ranelagh garden sipping champagne and Pimms well before noon and nibbling on large white ice cream after noon.
The BBC is always on site doing endless TV presentations that get hours and hours of prime-time scheduling every day of the show. All of England is apparently fascinated by every aspect of this show.
And there are always immaculate displays of plants — everything from foxgloves to clematis, peonies to primulas — inside the Great Pavilion, where attention to detail is quite simply extraordinary with not a flower, petal or leaf out of place.
You might think the stars of the show at Chelsea are always the main show gardens, most of which take at least two weeks to build and, in some cases, cost more than $300,000.
This year, there were 16, nine of which walked away with gold medals for excellence, the highest award you can win at Chelsea.
But in reality, as beautiful as the show gardens are, what makes Chelsea special, what makes it totally unforgettable, is the amazing complexity of elements that combine to produce an overall impression of refinement, intelligence and sophistication: classy statuary, stylish patio furniture, beautiful plants, clever innovations, all set within a cheerful garden party atmosphere that makes the event such a favourite spring celebration, a cornerstone of the English gardening calendar.
Judges at Chelsea love the avant-garde. In fact, this year, for the first time, they introduced a new category — Fresh Gardens — for gardens that are supposed to be “experimental and unconventional in their approach, embracing fields such as technology, film and arts in their designs.”
But despite its eagerness to update itself, stay current and reach out to a new generation of gardeners, Chelsea couldn’t hide the fact that is it still madly in love with cleanly executed, refined, well-structured formal gardens that acknowledge the long and illustrious history of gardenmaking that preceded them.
Gardens that won gold medals were mostly ones that succeeded at balancing formal and informal elements in an even-handed harmonious composition that achieved a happy synergy between rigid structural materials and relaxed, naturalistic, country-garden planting.
Best garden in show was just such a landscape, one designed by Cleve West, featuring beautifully formed clipped beech hedging, symmetrically placed linden trees, handsome pillars of natural stone and a confident use of yew topiaries, surrounded by herbaceous perennials.
Andy Sturgeon, one of Chelsea’s favourite designers, also snatched up a gold medal by pressing all the right buttons with his superbly well-balanced garden.
It featured warm creamcoloured natural stone with multiple holes drilled into some polished pieces for novelty, a rippling “energy wave” sculpture made from a series of copper rings, and a smart planting of boxwood balls around a shallow rectangular pond with clumps of purple-flowered sweet rocket dotted here and there to create a rhythm of colour.
Joe Swift, a gardening writer for The Times newspapers and a BBC presenter, won a gold medal for his sensational garden, which was easily the most original with large cedar frames that turned the garden into a series of living Tv-screen images.
He worked hard on this project, even going to the extent of taking large sandstone boulders, slicing them into horizontal pieces, and then reassembling them into a wonderfully attractive stack.
The biggest disappointment in the show was Sarah Price’s garden. Everyone was expecting great things from Price when she was selected as the designer of the Daily Telegraph’s garden.
She had been called the “Joan of Arc of horticulture” because of the “terror” she was striking in the hearts of old, male Chelsea designers.
However, although her garden was unquestionably a beautiful, subtle and sophisticated work with a lovely naturalistic walk-in-the-country feel, it was ultimately too low-key and seriously lacking in energy and intensity to persuade the judges to give it the coveted Best in Show prize. Instead, it netted a gold medal for Price, which is still an impressive achievement, but not quite what was expected.
Diamuid Gavin’s giant pyramid “retreat for lovers” garden caused a stir with its massive scaffolding draped with vines and secret in- ner small-spaced gardens. It was supposed to be a “magical” garden, but ultimately it all proved just too inaccessible and difficult to connect with emotionally.
By comparison, the Rooftop Workplace of Tomorrow garden by Patricia Fox with its green roof and green walls and bamboo decking was far more cutting-edge and offered a more believable and exciting glimpse of urban garden spaces of the future. Star plants? Common hedgerow cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris), a.k.a. by many people as Queen Anne’s lace, was boldly used in several Chelsea displays.
This is perhaps not surprising since cow parsley is now virtually a standard feature plant in many top English gardens, such as Sissinghurst and Great Dixter, along with buttercup and field daisies.
Other plants favoured in Chelsea displays include euphorbias, alliums, astrantia, epimediums, aquilegias, geums, hardy geraniums, smyrnium, thalictrums and rogersias. These were all used extensively, slotted along with oriental poppies, white and purple hesperis, vabascums and foxgloves. Clipped beech, hornbeams, yews, boxwood and limes were used in most gardens as standard foundation planting.