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Sally Nex

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Sally Nex

Tag Archives: Cleve West

RHS Chelsea sneak peek

11 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by sallynex in shows

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Andy Sturgeon, Chris Beardshaw, Cleve West, Diarmuid Gavin, Jo Thompson, RHS Chelsea Flower Show, Rosy Hardy, show preview, sneak peek

mandggarden

The M&G Garden, Chelsea 2015

It’s that time of year again…

Is it my imagination, or does the RHS Chelsea Flower Show come round more quickly each season? Maybe it’s just that I’ve been talking about it more, and earlier, than usual: I have the challenge of leading a tour group around the show for HF Holidays next year. Wish me luck. Fortunately it will be a small and select group and since I know Chelsea better than many – this will be my 10th year there – hopefully we’ll find a way around the crowds (as far as is possible anyway!)

Tickets went on sale to RHS members a few weeks ago and will be available to the public from 1 December. And to whet your appetite, the RHS has just released details of what you’re likely to see. It looks as if it’ll be a cracker of a show…

mandg

Cleve West’s design for the M&G Garden

Cleve West is back with the sponsor’s garden, M&G. What a welcome return. It was nice of him to give Dan a go (wouldn’t it be a clash of the Titans to have them both at Chelsea at the same time) but he was missed. The garden is an homage to Exmoor: I am certain to fall in love with it as Exmoor is just a few miles from my front door and speaks to my heart like few other landscapes. There is a lot of oak.

Diarmuid Gavin is also back: love him or loathe him, he never fails to cause a stir. I interviewed him a while back and since I wasn’t a fan, was taken aback to be charmed sockless. He was absolutely delightful. Something to do with mischievous Irish twinkles. Anyway: the garden. Totally bonkers. When I say Heath Robinson inspired it you’ll get the idea. It’s not really a garden at all: more of a giant clockwork toy with added box balls. A bit of me is horrified: a bit of me can’t wait to see it.

harrods

Diarmuid’s Heath Robinson garden

Chris Beardshaw is the next in a bit of a star-studded line-up: always one to watch, perhaps a bit safe sometimes but assured, calm, and quietly brilliant. It’s a roof garden, with a Japanese-inspired pavilion and a woodland planting scheme: I will be taking notes as woodland is what I’m doing a lot of at the moment in both my own gardens and the ones I look after, and Chris is an inspired planting designer.

Andy Sturgeon is returning to the scene of former triumphs for the Daily Telegraph (he won Best in Show for them in 2010). Bronze sculptures as mountains (hmm…) above ‘gorges’ of meltwater I can take or leave, but the drought-tolerant planting inspired by the semi-arid landscapes of the Sierra Madre and the Andes sounds extraordinary. Maytenus, asphodelus, junipers and South African Bulbine frutescens… one for plantsmen and women everywhere.

Jo Thompson is also back on Main Avenue with her design for the Chelsea Barracks: I adore Jo’s romantic style of planting and have fallen in love with every show garden she’s ever done (and the list is lengthening year by year). This one looks like classic Jo: it’s basically a rose garden, with a nod to the Grade I listed Garrison Chapel via a stained glass window.

Matthew Wilson continues the who’s who list of designers. His bench last year was a work of art, more sculpture than seating area. Stained glass again (how does that happen? I’m sure there’s some kind of ley line operating between designers preparing for Chelsea): this time it’s York Minster, currently restoring its East Window and unveiling it just before the show, next spring. The garden is a bit of a love letter to Yorkshire, in fact: I think Matthew might be missing Harlow Carr…

And Rosy Hardy is making the leap from Pavilion to Main Avenue – and there couldn’t be a better person to do it. I’m really excited to see what she can do: her creations for Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants, her nursery, are always breathtaking. Perhaps it gets boring, winning a gold medal every year (she has 20) and you need new challenges. Anyway, she’s taken the River Test in Hampshire as her inspiration: another place that’s dear to my heart, as bits of my family still live in that part of Hampshire and I’ve always loved the chalky, glass-clear Test meandering through the fields. Intriguingly, she’s ‘inviting visitors to take a walk through a dried-up chalk stream’; famously you’re never allowed onto Chelsea gardens, so this may be figurative, but we can hope…

There are 16 large show gardens in all, so I could go on further about Hugo Bugg’s Jordan-inspired arid garden, or James Basson’s perfumer’s garden (can’t wait for that one: I adore everything James does). But you’ll just have to go along and see them for yourself. I may yet have to write another post about what’s coming up in the Pavilion and indeed the artisan gardens as there are at least two things I’m jigging up and down on the spot about: but that’s for tomorrow. It’s going to be a great Chelsea!

Postcard from Chelsea: Medals Day

22 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

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Cleve West, RHS Chelsea Flower Show, topiary

Congratulations – once again – to the wonderful Cleve West, winner for the second year running of Best in Show for his sublime topiary garden for Brewin Dolphin.

Rumour has it he thought they’d made a mistake when they told him. But this is a garden which creeps up on you gradually: go back a few times, take another look, and you’ll find yourself slowly falling in love.

At first glance you take it for your standard formal symmetric stately home style layout.

Then you take some photos, and realise it isn’t actually symmetrical at all.

The craggy well head wall sculpture at one end has a corner knocked off; the weighty topiary, like anchors holding the garden in place, is a little wonky in places.

Unlike conventional ‘symmetrical’ gardens, you can’t see it all at once: you try taking a photo of the whole thing and it’s just about impossible.

Slowly it dawns on you: the whole thing is one big illusion, a mischievous game played with a twinkle in the eye. I found it enchanting.

And the planting… It was vintage Cleve: romantic, beautifully judged, passionate. Soft umbels, little fireworks of green and sparkles of white valerian over a froth of Geranium pyrenaicum ‘Bill Wallis’ (one of my own favourites – I have it gambolling about my garden and adore it with a passion). And all lifted with just the perfect splash of ravishing scarlet here and there from dancing ‘Ladybird’ poppies.

I loved the contrast between the solid, reliable topiary sitting there like grumpy old granddads while the light twinkly fairy plants danced about their knees. Here’s another picture. Actually I took quite a lot. It really was very, very lovely, especially today when the sun came out.

It took me a little while to ‘get’ it but when I did, this garden stood head and shoulders above the rest for me. Quite, quite brilliant.

Postcard from Chelsea: Medals Day

24 Tuesday May 2011

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

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Cleve West

Cleve West’s garden for the Daily Telegraph: one of eight gold medal winners and also this year’s Best in Show. Dramatic sculpture, the most wonderful ochre-painted wall, cobbles, Sophora trees, artless, jewel-like planting…. oh, I love this garden!

So much so that I’ve got another postcard today too – here’s a closer look at that planting.

Myrtus communis subsp. tarentina, Dianthus cruentus (plant of the show for me), bronze fennel, Artemisia ‘Valerie Finnis’, Allium nigrum, Euphorbia cyparissias ‘Fens Ruby’, Eryngium eburneum, and Libertia grandiflora, in case you want to do this at home.

The Wisley glasshouse

15 Friday Jun 2007

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

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birch-log path, Cleve West, garden writing, glasshouse, jungle planting, orchids, philodendron, RHS Wisley, Tom Stuart-Smith, waterfall

One of the great privileges I have with my garden writers’ hat on is that I get to go to sneak previews – and last night I went along to the unveiling of the new glasshouse at RHS Wisley, which opens to the public for the first time today.

Since I’m such a regular visitor to Wisley, I’ve been watching this amazing structure going up gradually over the years, and went along to another press bash in February to see it as the planting went in – well, then it was almost entirely under water after a winter of torrential rain, and we were all taking bets on whether it would be ready in time to open.

We needn’t have worried. It’s quite amazing what they’ve done in the four months since then: it still looks very “new”, and the planting outside (designed by Tom Stuart-Smith) is just in so will take some to show what it’s made of: but inside it is breathtaking. It’s going to be wonderful watching it grow over the months and years to come.


Here it is: a little stark, perhaps, until the exterior landscaping develops, but a remarkable structure nonetheless. It was designed in Holland, and doubles-up as a water collection system.


At the centre is a magnificent waterfall – you walk behind it as you pass from the temperate side into the tropical. The rock is artificial, and hides a “root zone” exhibit underneath.


There were orchids in the palm trees: I wasn’t quite sure if they were there for our benefit, or if they’re going to stay! They looked fantastic, anyway.


And then there were the plants… these Philodendron leaves were up to two feet long and that soft, velvety texture was so utterly gorgeous. And this is just a baby plant…


Outside in Cleve West’s teaching garden, there were loads of great ideas – I’m going to nick this fantastic birch-log path for the jungle area around my pond.

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