‘I’ll weed my own garden, but not my show garden’
Cleve West promotes the plants as ‘unsung heroes’ – but admits he roots them out of green space at home
‘It will be challenging to some people who think that a garden must be perfect. We’re asking people to be a little bit more relaxed’
A CHELSEA Flower Show designer who uses weeds in his competition garden has admitted he gets rid of them in his own back yard.
Cleve West’s show garden for Centrepoint, the homelessness charity, features green alkanet, described by the RHS as a “troublesome weed”, and bindweed, which the society damns as the “great enemy of the allotmenteer”.
Weeds have emerged as a significant trend at the show and feature in a third of competition gardens, where they are called “unsung heroes”.
Praised as a sustainable choice because they do not require fertilisers, they are considered an important food source for pollinators and other insects.
Mr West, who has won six gold medals and two Best in Show awards at Chelsea, admitted that the planting in his show garden was not easily reproduced. “I’m not saying that we should take up all the plants in the garden and plant weeds,” he said. “You have to realise a garden is a managed space, and there are practicalities involved. So something might trip you up, or if it’s choking out another plant that you want to keep.
“I still weed. But I’m just trying to get people to be a bit more sympathetic.”
Mr West’s show garden features the remains of a derelict Victorian town house and an uprooted tree – to represent the precariousness of homelessness. Alongside alkanet and bindweed, he has also planted red campion, daisies and nettles. “The analogy of the weeds growing in this garden stitching together all these broken walls is Centrepoint stitching together people’s lives,” Mr West added.
Gardeners who want to get rid of green alkanet should “dig deep and keep pulling it out until it runs out of steam”, rather than use pesticides, he advised. The RHS says digging or mulching are its preferred methods to control it, but that “where these methods are not feasible, chemical controls may need to be used.”
Weeds have never been subject to a ban at Chelsea and the RHS says one has never been necessary because their exclusion until now has been cultural.
But there has been a growing trend for more naturalistic planting. Last year’s winner was modelled on a rewilded landscape featuring buttercups.
Tom Massey, who used clover, common knapweed and dandelions in his garden this year, said the traditional view of weeds as any plant that “grows where you don’t want them to” should be redefined. “What we’re kind of asking people to do with this garden is to re-frame the way they look at their spaces.
“Does it need to be pristine, does it need to be perfect?
Do you need to have extreme control over every aspect of the garden, or can you let things be a bit more loose, a bit more natural?” he said. “Could you let the dandelions go mad and get this amazing hit of yellow and this incredible food source for insects?”
He added: “I think it will be challenging to some people who maybe have the view that a garden does need to be pristine and perfect, and if a dandelion has crept its way in that’s really bad.
“I think what we’re asking people is to just be a little bit more relaxed and a bit more accepting of nature – and understanding.”