Tag Archives: artisan gardens

Postcard from Chelsea: Heavy metal gardening

25 Thursday May 2017

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Walkers Wharf Garden by Graham Bodle

Best Artisan Garden

I can’t help feeling the judges have been in a slightly bolshy frame of mind this week. Certainly they’ve been in uncompromising mood, with not the slightest concession to things like popularity or crowd-pleasing.

And so they walked past Sarah Eberle’s perfect orange tree and the breathtaking beauty of Gosho no Niwa (No Wall, No War); they turned from the thoughtful planting on the World Horse Welfare garden and the hand-made wooden boat on the Broadland Boatbuilder’s Garden. And instead, they chose as their favourite a garden full of post-industrial rusty metal and hardly a flower in sight.

It might not have been my own choice for the best of the exceptionally good lineup of Artisan gardens this year. But I could see why they singled it out.

The planting was delicately understated yet full of unusual choices like rushes, water mint and miniature hostas. And it had several beautiful little touches: I loved the way the rusty orange flowers on the Pinus sylvestris were picked up in the seat and again in the rusty metal.

It also chimes with one of the RHS’s Big Messages at the moment in showing how a ‘grey’ bit of Britain – i.e. a post-industrial landscape full of the debris of heavy industry – could be transformed through planting. And in the process, managed somehow to convince me that things like rusty old chains made for some really rather funky garden sculpture.

Besides, any garden that shoehorns a socking great iron crane into a tiny 5m x 7m space and then sets it off with plants in such a way as to make it look pretty damn fantastic has already pulled off a fairly spectacular feat of imagination and engineering. Which, when you think about it, is reason enough to claim the top prize. Bloody brilliant.

Postcard from Chelsea #3: Floating pretty

25 Wednesday May 2016

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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.

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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.

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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….

 

RHS Chelsea sneak peek #2

12 Thursday Nov 2015

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Hillier’s gold medal winning display from 2015: as it turns out, their last

Of course the RHS Chelsea Flower show isn’t just about the big fancy show gardens, even if they do shout the loudest.

Among my very favourite features of the show are the small gardens – particularly the Artisan Gardens (still think of them by their old name, Courtyard Gardens though: can’t get out of the habit, somehow).

And then there’s the Pavilion… the great beating heart of the show. What it’s all about, really: without those perfect, breathtaking, impossibly beautiful plants from every corner of the world there simply wouldn’t be a show.

So while I’m previewing Chelsea 2016, I couldn’t possibly pass up the chance to give you a sneak peek at the bits of Chelsea regular visitors know are really the best.

Great Pavilion

There are seismic changes afoot in the Pavilion next year.

The huge display by Hillier around the central monument has been a landmark fixture for 70 years of gold medal winning displays: they’re the most successful exhibitors in the century-plus history of the show.

Now however their MD and designer of the last 25 gold medal winning displays, Andy McIndoe, has bowed out. There can be few people on whose shoulders Chelsea can be said to rest: but Andy is definitely one of them. He’s being a bit cagey about whether or not he’ll be involved with Chelsea next year: but he’s definitely not doing another Hillier display. He – and his shirts – will be much missed.

Instead, in the big central spot there will be a large train. Specifically, the Orient Express, or rather one carriage of it. Bowdens, the hosta people, have taken on the daunting task of filling the 6000 sq ft plot with a fully planted railway station. There will be stewards, I’m told. And crockery.

Sue Beesley will be back again for another go at improving on her impressive debut silver next year (despite the cack-handed helpers); and New Covent Garden Flower Market is making its debut with what is going to be a breathtaking extravaganza of cut flowers.

There will be some front gardens to give you a few makeover ideas a la Ground Force, courtesy of the Horticultural Trades Association‘s Love the Plot You’ve Got campaign; and rhododendrons a go-go (both the RHS and Millais Nurseries are celebrating the centenary of the Rhododendron Society). People keep trying to resurrect rhodies and I don’t see any sign of it catching on yet: let’s see if this does the trick. Oh yes; and a chunk of castle from Cholmondeley Castle in Cheshire.

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Sarah Eberle’s watery world

Artisan Gardens

In the secluded huddle of gardens under the trees of Ranelagh Way the headline act is undoubtedly Sarah Eberle, a Chelsea veteran with a Best in Show (2007) under her belt. Love the sound of her floating garden: fishing nets, watercress, and a lounger-cum-boat.

There is going to be much noise in this corner of the show: Frederick Whyte is creating a garden all about helping children to make music and Peter Eustance has drawn inspiration from percussionist Evelyn Glennie for an ‘acoustic garden’ harnessing everything from the wood to sunshine to make pulsing rhythms. Just hope they don’t put them next door to each other, that’s all.

Fresh Gardens

Conceptual gardens have made a shaky transition from Hampton Court to Chelsea; in fact they’ve rather lost their way at Hampton Court too what with the imposing of this year’s misguided ‘themes’ instead of letting artists have their head. Maybe it’s because it’s no longer new; it’s harder to surprise when you’re expecting to be surprised.

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The Dyer’s Garden

This year is looking promising, though, perhaps because people aren’t trying quite so hard. I love the sound of Claudy Jongstra‘s dyer’s garden: right up my street, all hand-dyed fabrics and the plants used to create them. Juliet Sargent weaves a strong story about modern-day slavery around an oak tree; and I really want to see Tatyana Goltsova‘s Lace Tree, threading living branches through gossamer lace.

There’s also a garden in a concrete box. ‘Nuff said.

 

Postcard from Chelsea: Reinventing conifers

20 Wednesday May 2015

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The Sculptor’s Picnic Garden

Gold and Best Artisan Garden

Bit tricky to capture a good pic of Graham Bodle’s atmospheric little woodland nook I’m afraid, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that this was an artisan garden with a quite remarkable sense of place.

For one thing, it reinvents the use of dwarf conifers where most have failed. If you thought pint-sized pines were best consigned to the 70s where they belong, I urge you to go take a look at this sparse, pared-down way of using them in the smallest of spaces.

The sculptural flattened sprays of Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Stoneham’ flanking the path, for example, or the purplish brown cones of Pinus pumila picked up in a simple underplanting of the black-leafed clover, Trifolium pentaphyllum – and all over-arched by massive craggy stripped-back oak branches over seats and a table rough-hewn from tree stumps like something out of a Lord of the Rings film set. I shall never look at dwarf conifers in the same way again.