Monthly Archives: September 2012

Postcard from Japan: Gold-winning gardens

30 Sunday Sep 2012

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When you get eleven of the world’s best designers together, give them the same brief and more or less the same conditions – limited budget, two weeks to build and source the plants, and a Japanese contractor with translator – it’s a fascinating insight into the way different nationalities approach the same challenges.
 
The best of the gardens at the Gardening World Cup in Japan were simply superb. There were five gold medals this year: each of them, in their own different way, interpreted the theme of peace with intelligence, subtlety and thoughtfulness: all the more extraordinary given the constraints they were put under.
 
Lim in Chong chose an Islamic garden to corner the Best in Show prize, but the four other gold medal winners took different approaches, taking inspiration from the path of a bullet to water as the source of life to Japanese castles.
 
Xanthe White: Regenerating through the water
(Best Design)
Xanthe’s sunken garden envelops you the moment you walk in, with its burnt-wood pergola and enclosing planked walls. Orchids and bright yellow daisies cascaded down green walls and dark pools dripped with ferns and broad-leaved petasites
The planting was lush and green, with water in two black pools edged with rock and wood: this garden was unmistakeably New Zealand, but with a Japanese accent
…and the planting on the living wall outside was just ravishing

James Basson: Dulce et Decorum Est
(Best Interpretation)
 
 
Taking inspiration from the Wilfred Owen poem Dulce et Decorum Est (Pro Patria Mori) James’s garden took the passage of a bullet through solid material as its theme: the small hole in the back wall widens through to a jagged wreckage in the front, also symbolising the terrible effect of war from a small cause to devastating consequences

Soft planting of sanguisorbas, grasses, eupatorium and chocolate cosmos soothed the blasted concrete and emphasised the role of nature in healing
 
Kazuyuki Ishihara: An Alcove Garden
(People’s Choice Award)

Ishihara is already a familiar name for his regular gold medal winning forays to Chelsea: this time he’s on home turf and designing an uncompromisingly Japanese landscape, with tea house, cascading pools and a maple just turning bronze
This is the lower pool, covering the width of the garden: the upper pool, overhung by a low branch from a nearby pine, is fed by a bubbling cascade

Behind the pine is this moongate – or perhaps moon window – let into the stone walls lined with moss and sedum,
a wooden carving of dragons set across it

Hiroshi Terashita: Peace Blooms in Forest

This was a garden which looked as though it had been there for centuries. The sweeping walls are in the style of ancient 16th century Sengoku castles, constructed with sloping walls to keep the enemy out: each stone was hand carved by Japanese stonemasons working on the garden in slippers
Planting was simple and understated: I loved this sweep of white-flowered water plants skirting the edge of the wall. Birches, ash and konara oaks (Quercus serrata) sheltered the ferns and moss beneath
…and there were little details like these hand-carved stone dragonflies set into the paving which just caught at your heart. Exquisite.

Postcard from Japan: Medals Day at the Gardening World Cup

29 Saturday Sep 2012

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Sometimes I can’t quite believe my luck. This week I get to spend in Nagasaki, Japan, visiting the Japanese version of the Chelsea Flower Show.

A peek into the little paradise that is ‘Eye to Eye’, the winning garden by Lim in Chong

The Gardening World Cup, held in the slightly incongruous setting of a Dutch theme park (of which I hope more later: it is bizarreness in a class of its own) takes place over 10 days and as the name would suggest it’s a competition, between eleven garden designers invited from all over the world.

You enter the garden through a barren space stabbed with shards of rusted metal like shrapnel

Among them this year are our very own Jo Thompson, of Doris the Chelsea caravan fame, and Richard Miers, usually to be seen designing the likes of 15-acre gardens in Surrey and landscaping the grounds of Grade I listed houses and the like but this year dabbling in the show gardens game for a change.

 
The journey ends when you step through the last eye gate and into a tranquil haven of bubbling water and gentle flowers
The standard is incredibly high. There are leading designers here from the US, New Zealand, South Africa, Malaysia, Korea and of course Japan, all at the top of their game. Today we found out the medals, and also the winner of the coveted title of ‘Best in Show’ (that particular gong comes with a 1 million yen prize cheque – over £8000).
One day I would like the kind of garden you can pave with blue-and-white Islamic tiles
(and the climate to go with it, please)

The winning garden, Eye to Eye’ by Lim in Chong from Malaysia (known to everyone as ‘Inch’), took the theme of ‘World Peace’ to heart.

It’s a garden of two halves, in which you make a journey through ‘eye’ gates across a barren space filled with monumental rocks like gravestones. Everything here is sharp and uncomfortable: the colours are black and white and grey, and the path is of jagged rusted metal shards, raised unevenly so you pick your way gingerly across them. Two stone ‘Tourou’ lanterns are Malaysian symbols of death, lighting the way for the spirits of the dead.

This was a garden of all the senses: the bubbling star pool in the centre is a gentle backdrop of sound

There’s a mirrored sliding door set into the framework of the second eye gate. Closed, you’re trapped, shut into the harsh, conflict-ridden world of war. But it opens to reveal the second part of the garden: a classic Islamic enclosed courtyard full of flowers and running water.

The planting was charming, but very English to my eye… but look at that strappy pandanus behind

This is as much of a contrast with what went before as it’s possible to have. It’s a moving, beautiful space where I just wanted to sit for hours. A raised star-shaped pool at the centre bubbles quietly: the floor is tiled with white-and-blue ceramic, and there are exquisite little touches like the pool of floating rose-madder flowers off to one side. Latticework windows allow you to look in from outside.

Other corners were unmistakeably oriental

The cool shade inside is a welcome refuge from the searing Japanese sun (it’s 25°C and humid here, and the sunlight is dazzling: sorry, I realise this won’t go down well with British readers, but if it makes you feel better there’s a typhoon forecast for Sunday). The planting is in soft pastels, and oddly English in feel: cosmos and roses are everywhere. They’re unusual exotics here, of course: you have to ‘read’ gardens differently on the other side of the world.

And this was a particular favouite: the buds, set along the length of the stems, are claret-red, too

It’s saved from cottage garden twee-ness by a cluster of gingers in the corner, a sumptuous cream abutilon with a blood-red eye, and what looked to me like variegated pandanus grass (we have no indication of plant names here so you’re stuck with my hit-and-miss plant identification skills, I’m afraid). I thought it a breathtaking garden, thoughtfully constructed and lovingly planted. It’s about time we saw more of Inch in the UK, I’d say. This is the kind of garden design excellence we can all learn from.

Of very small things

13 Thursday Sep 2012

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I’ve mentioned my talented friend Pattie before on this blog: she’s a floral artist of the most patient and dedicated kind, and I am regularly rendered speechless by her extraordinary creations.

Here’s her latest.

She’s something of a specialist in miniatures, compositions made entirely from plant material but measuring no more than 10cm in any direction.

It was for the annual NAFAS competition at the Wisley Flower Show, this year moved out of the rather gloomy tent it’s usually in, to take up a much sunnier spot in the Bicentenary Glasshouse.

The theme for this year’s miniatures was ‘Just Perfick’. Which, I think, it is. Luckily the judges thought so too and gave it first prize.

The level of detail is just astounding: as you can see, it’s a little picnic scene with bowls of berry ‘apples’ and a basket of buns made from pearl barley kernels delicately painted red along the crease.

Here’s the second prize winner, by Rachel Sherwin: I can’t work out what the ‘apples’ are on this one (there’s one on the tree and a couple on the little chair underneath). They’re seedpods of some description, but nothing I recognise: these artists are geniuses at seeing miniature shapes in things you or I would just pop in a seed packet and forget about.

And third prize: perhaps a more straightforward arrangement from Anne Blunt, but nonetheless exquisitely pretty for all that. Those little blossoms so artfully arranged on the twig look just like a Japanese cherry in springtime. In fact now I come to think of it, there’s more than an echo of Japanese tradition in these delicate little creations.

If you’re one of the many people who scuttle past the floral art tent at flower shows on the way to something more obviously gardening-related, do stop next time and take a look, if only just for these little jewels. They’re like nothing else you’ll ever see.

Wisley Flower Show in pictures

07 Friday Sep 2012

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Glorious sunshine beckons this weekend for the Wisley Flower Show: for my money, one of the very best small shows there is.

I popped by for the first day on Thursday and accidentally discovered the way to ‘do’ the show with minimal discomfort. As regulars will know there’s a killer of a traffic jam right down the A3 and on to the M25 which builds up gradually until by mid-morning you’re waiting well over an hour to get to the front gate.

Because I had a ridiculously over-committed day which involved collecting £200 of wood from a sawmill, visiting Wisley Flower Show and hacking the 2 1/2 hour drive back to Somerset, all by lunchtime, I turned up on the dot of 9am when the show opens. What a revelation.

I swept regally in without so much as a hesitation and was politely waved to my place in Car Park No 1 (right by the entrance) by a small phalanx of attendants. I strolled through the garden, almost alone bar feverishly lawnmowing gardeners, and had the whole show very nearly to myself for the first half-hour.

By the time I was ready to leave it was only 11am and the queues were well on the way back to Junction 9. Once again, I swept out, waving (slightly sadistically) at all the sweating punters on the other side of the A3 still waiting to get in. You couldn’t help but feel a bit smug.

Anyway: if you get the chance to go this weekend, don’t miss it. Here are a few of the many delights you’ll enjoy.
 


Crocosmia x crocosmiiflora ‘Emily Mackenzie’, Leonotis leonurus and Astilbe x chinensis taquetii ‘Superba’ in joyous union on the Best in Show stand by Madrona Nursery

Flower of the show was definitely Rudbeckia laciniata ‘Herbstonne’: it was everywhere, about 7ft tall and supremely elegant. Probably my favourite of all the rudbeckias and superb in big, in-yer-face planting schemes

Solanum quitoense, a gorgeous sultry big purple leaf with the dew still frosting its upper surfaces, from tropical woodland in central America – one of an extraordinary and inspiring display of exotics from Plantbase Nursery

Aralia cordata flowers catching the sunlight on the Edulis Nursery stand

I rather liked the funky pink frames used to set off the plants on Bean Place Nursery’s stand

Dichroa februga, an evergreen hydrangea relative (The Botanic Nursery)

An intriguing heather from Trewidden: don’t you just love the way the stems carry on up out of those huge blowsy flowers? It’s Erica verticillata – and 70s and boring it ain’t

And last but not least: one for all you heuchera lovers out there. Heuchera ‘Sashay’ from Heucheraholics had the most gorgeous ruched leaves with just the right touch of purple petticoat showing. Exquisite.