29 Sunday May 2016
Posted in shows
As the bulldozers move in to the Chelsea showground and reduce all to turf once more, I just thought I’d share a selection of the most beautiful plants which caught my eye from the Great Pavilion. Till next year!
28 Saturday May 2016
Posted in new plants, shows
The Ashwood Nurseries exhibit, easy winner of the Diamond Jubilee award this year
The talk of the Pavilion this year was not the giant Pullman carriage at the Bowdens stand – but a diminutive little tumble of starry flowers spangling the mossy ground beneath Japanese cherries, pussy willows and artfully-placed branches of larch.
It’s the first time the consummate plantsman John Massey has brought his collection of hepaticas to Chelsea and they caused quite the stir, scooping the Diamond Jubilee Award for best display. They certainly made me see hepaticas in a whole new light: I’d always rather glanced past them before, convinced they were fussy little alpines which needed more care than I could sensibly give them. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Love this way of displaying the perfection of the flowers
Hepaticas are spring-flowering woodlanders (these had been held back for Chelsea: normally they’re in flower in February) for planting under deciduous shrubs and trees. They’re tolerant of all soils, but best where they have spring sunshine but summer shade. H. nobilis and H. transsylvanica are the ones for growing outside; there are many more to explore once you get hooked but you’ll need an alpine house. The Asian and American species, like teeny tiny H. insularis and even teenier H. henryi, are very, very special but need the care and attention to match.
H. nobilis var pyrenaica ‘Stained Glass’
John has been working on developing interspecies hybrids, aiming at plentiful flowers but also bringing out the beauties of the foliage: I hadn’t realised hepatica leaves were quite so lovely. They are three-cornered, like a tricorn hat, and come in attractive variegations reminding me a little of the leaf patterning on cyclamen.
H. ‘Ashwood Charm’
Two of the new varieties bred at Ashwood Nurseries and shown here for the first time were H. nobilis var pyrenaica ‘Stained Glass’, with quite the most gorgeous leaves, and H. ‘Ashwood Charm’ which earned its name in spades with a froth of exquisite little white flowers. Get your order in now to beat the rush (it’s http://www.ashwoodnurseries.com). My guess is that there will be a lot of hepatica talk come next spring: these are plants whose moment in the sun has arrived.
27 Friday May 2016
Posted in new plants, shows
Clematis chiisanensis ‘Amber’: Plant of the Year 2016
The Plant of the Year competition at Chelsea has only been running a few years, but it’s really shone the spotlight on one of the things the show has always done well.
New plants first seen at Chelsea include favourites like Geranium ‘Rosanne’ and the ‘Yak’ (yakushimanum) rhododendron hybrids, as well as uncounted classic roses: in short, some of the best and widely-grown plants in the world.
Now the best new releases of the season compete for the chance to be crowned as the one to watch for this year. The worthy winner, from Taylors Clematis, was the somewhat unpronounceable but very beautiful Clematis chiinanensis ‘Amber’. It even flowers twice a year, to add good value to its considerable charms.
Here are a few more of the new arrivals on the horticultural scene this year. Not all were finalists in the Plant of the Year competition but all, I hope you agree, look likely to have an illustrious future in our gardens ahead of them.
Iris ‘Libellule Jaune’ from Cayeux Iris
Leucanthemum vulgare ‘Lollipop’ Wyndford Farm Plants
Cirsium rivulare ‘Frosted Magic’ Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants
Rosa ‘Roald Dahl’ David Austin Roses
Clematis ‘Volunteer’ Raymond Evison
Rhododendron ‘Huisman’s Sun Star’ Millais Nurseries
Chrysanthemum ‘Rossano Charlotte’ National Chrysanthemum Society
Acer ‘Moonrise’ Hillier Nurseries
26 Thursday May 2016
Planting combination of the week for me was this soft confection of ethereal pastels from Hay Joung Hwang on the LG Smart Garden: Eremurus robustus, Digitalis purpurea ‘Alba’, Geranium phaeum ‘Album’, Phlox divaricata ‘Clouds of Perfume’, Persicaria bistorta ‘Superba’, Rosa ‘Royal Philharmonic’, and Iris ‘Jane Phillips’. Just sublime.
25 Wednesday May 2016
Posted in shows
It takes some doing to create a garden in a 7m x 5m space which is so complex, so detailed and so atmospheric it can take you halfway across the world in a second.
But so it is with Sarah Eberle’s lushly planted slice of the Mekong Delta for Viking Cruises – winner of a gold medal and Best Artisan garden (by miles, if I had my way). So luxuriant, so densely-planted, so detailed is it that there’s just no way to do it justice with a few snatched pictures – so you’ll have to take my word for it. It’s a true piece of theatre.
The planting floats in flat-bottomed traditional Cambodian fishing boats, dripping leaves and flowers over the sides into the water beneath. A riotous mix of dahlias, gloriosa lilies, philodendrons and orchids crammed into every inch of space conjures up the steamy South Asian jungle in a few deft sweeps of exotic, tropical-looking foliage and flowers.
And I did love that there were vegetables here too. I’m always on the lookout for veg at Chelsea and these were as lush as the flowers that surrounded them. Some veg just have that jungly look, so it wasn’t a surprise to see gourds, okra and aubergines. But who knew cabbage and spinach could look exotic? Must add dahlias to the cabbage patch next year….
24 Tuesday May 2016
Posted in shows
Well: Andy Sturgeon has done it again with his dinosaur-inspired creation for the Daily Telegraph. It’s huge, sculptural, dramatic, monumental…. and…. oh dear. Not my kind of thing at all.
I really like Andy’s designs as a rule: the last time he won, in 2010, was with a garden I still talk about today. It had a similarly strong design, with sparse, beautiful, well-considered planting, and a haunting sense of atmosphere. It left you with the kind of images that stay on the retina for years afterwards.
Now there’s a trip hazard waiting to happen…
This one may stay in my mind for all the wrong reasons. The bold design was, for me, just a bit too bold, a bit too in-yer-face. It kept pulling my eye away from the extraordinary planting I’d rather be looking at, full of beauties I’d never come across before. When you have star plants like this, it’s a crime to have your attention dragged away so you can look at a load of white limestone instead.
Anyway. What do I know. It was all undeniably very ambitious: Andy has shouldered the task of telling the history of the world in a garden, no less, from dinosaurs onwards, bronze stegosaurus plates and all.
For me, though, it was the plants which swung it: my, but they’re special. Their names are like a rollcall of the rare and exotic and sent me scurrying for my plant encyclopedias: Anizoganthus (kangaroo paw) and gaunt, sparse Corokia x virgata I’m familiar with, but the tufty red spires of Echium russicum, grassy Poa labillardierei and Ephedra fragilis, delicate Bulbine frutescens… all had me rifling feverishly through the pages.
The effect was so ethereal, otherworldly, alien: a world of sparse, twisted stems and delicate, shy flowers in silvers and tangerine oranges, so unfamiliar you could believe a stegosaurus might walk around the corner at any minute. It convinced better, in fact, than any amount of firepits and paving.
23 Monday May 2016
Posted in shows
And a lovely time was had by all….!!
