Chelsea Flower Show: True colours on show
HARD to believe that last week the grounds of Royal Hospital Chelsea looked more like a building site than the venue for the world’s most prestigious garden show.
Trucks overflowing with plants inched down Main Avenue, fork lift drivers weaved between the plots and there was the incessant noise of power saws cutting through stone and wood.
Worry and fatigue are the constant companions of the show garden designers, while aching backs and grubby finger nails are the reward for the many volunteers who help to build the gardens.
But rather like a prized rare plant that has finally opened up to the sun’s rays, when the RHS Chelsea Flower Show opens its doors to the public on Tuesday at 8am everything in this particular garden will be rosy.
No matter that the last of the plants may have only been trowelled in minutes before the start of Monday’s judging, by the time the Queen arrives in the afternoon the gardeners are booted and suited or in their best linen dresses ready to show the royal party around their patch if required.
RHS Chelsea has been a regular fixture in the royal calendar since 1913, when the RHS moved its Great Spring Show to the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea.
The BBC first televised it in 1958 and it has been responsible for setting flower fashions ever since with hostas in 1968, auriculas in 1982 and, recently, alliums, Verbena bonariensis and tree ferns.
So who are the runners and riders in this year’s RHS Chelsea? Who are the designers to watch out for?
Jo Thompson has been chosen by the show’s sponsors M&G Investments and has created a retreat from the 21st century with her trademark pastel pink and cream roses and peonies, plus flowering shrubs such as Viburnum opulus and Cornus ‘Milky Way’.
These surround a natural swimming pool and oak-framed writer’s studio.
“Our garden has very soft organic lines,” said Jo, who does not favour the corporate-looking gardens often produced at RHS Chelsea.
“It’s not that harsh, rectilinear type of garden with massive expanses of stone.”
Dan Pearson has designed his first RHS Chelsea garden since 2004, tempted back at the prospect of recreating a piece of the Trout Stream and Rockery garden at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire.
My garden is very simplistic but has an awful lot of detail, so when you come back after half an hour you see something you didn’t see the first time
“I felt when I was here the last time it was wrong to make a garden for just five days and I felt uncomfortable about the waste and that the gardens were not being recycled,” he said.
“I wanted to work on something that lasts decades rather than days, so that is why I said it was important that the garden had another life.”
Dan’s Laurent Perrier garden features plants and rocks from Chatsworth, including “these angular, cranky, twisted yellow rhododendrons”, and they will all go back to Chatsworth for Dan to complete the restoration of the Trout Stream and Rockery after the show.
Chris Beardshaw is also working on a garden with a long-term future.
His Morgan Stanley Healthy Cities garden will be transferred to East London to become the heart of community project.
“This is a project that is rather unusual because it has been specifi cally designed not for the show garden but for a real estate in East London,” he said.
Field maples and birch trees provide height to his garden, a series of spaces bordered by low box hedge and paths, softened by spikes of foxgloves, ferns and Euphorbia Fireglow.
Also one to watch is Darren Hawkes, who favours ferns and woodland plants such as foxgloves too.
His ambitious design involves the midday sun shining through a hole in a canopy that will strike the water feature below to create a disk of light moving across his garden.
“I wanted it to be fun and for people to engage,” he said.
But could Alan Gardner’s Viking Ocean Cruises garden be crowned unofficial edgy show garden winner?
With his dyed blue hair and a view of design dictated by his Asperger syndrome, Alan has filmed a Channel 4 show called The Autistic Gardner.
He said of his design: “This is a conceptual garden. It’s full of lime-greens, blue and white-coloured plants, that are all foamy looking and naturalistic.
“It is very simplistic but has an awful lot of detail, so when you come back after half an hour you see something you didn’t see the first time.”
Alan’s garden will be transferred to Somerset after the show, to a National Autistic Society horticultural therapy site.
So it seems one of the best trends at this year’s show is the transfer of all those wonderful plants and genius designs, so that they can be enjoyed by those who were not lucky enough to get into this year’s RHS Chelsea show.
