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Postcard from Chelsea: Best in Show

23 Tuesday May 2017

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The M&G Garden, James Basson

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I can’t help feeling a bit smug about this year’s winner of Best in Show. I have been saying for quite some time that I thought James Basson was destined for great things: I first met him in Japan back in 2012, when he was doing the Gardening World Cup and created a fine, thoughtful and delicately judged garden based on the Wilfred Owen poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’. Even back then I knew he was doing something rather different.

I have loved everything he’s done ever since. Last year’s garden for L’Occitane recreated a Provence landscape with breathtaking attention to detail and was, for my money, head and shoulders above the rest (the RHS judges, sadly, didn’t agree with me).

Which is why it is a little painful for me to confess that this year’s garden is not, for me, a favourite. I hope he won’t mind me saying that I found the strongly geometric hard landscaping, meant to evoke a Maltese quarry, overwhelming and over-dominant. I think it’s something to do with the crisply-cut, cuboid, modernist shapes. There was a lot of rock in his L’Occitane garden, after all, but there it complemented the planting. This swamps it.

And that’s a shame, as the plants themselves are quite remarkable. Typically of James’s attention to detail, each one is thoughtfully chosen and grouped to recreate particular microclimates: many are Maltese natives, rarely seen on these shores.

These are austere wildflowers, with none of the over-the-top prettiness of Chelsea. It’s a harsh, uncompromising landscape which perfectly evokes the dry, edge-of-existence environment that is as fragile as it gets. It is brave, for Chelsea (especially in the sponsor’s garden), and makes no concessions to crowd-pleasing. It is, in fact, what James Basson does best.

So look past the overly-geometric, jarringly modernist stonework which I wish had more rough edges, more chaos, more wildness; and concentrate instead on the gaunt, stark dignity of the plants between. For that is where the real truth of this garden lies, and that is why James is such a very special and very different kind of designer whose moment in the spotlight has, at last, arrived.

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Chelsea 2017: Sneak peek

13 Friday Jan 2017

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The RHS Chelsea Flower Show: never less than spectacular

The revealing of this year’s RHS Chelsea Flower Show gardens is always an exciting moment, and just the boost you need at this time of year. It reminds you that there is life beyond the snow and the ice: that one day the flowers will bloom and look breathtaking and you will feel inspired by the sheer scope of what’s possible in a smallish garden space.

This year looks like a cracker yet again: 24 show gardens, and the return of gardening heroes like Nigel Dunnett, Sarah Eberle, Jo Thompson, James Basson and Chris Beardshaw. Everyone is clearly in escapist mood as there are gardens to take you to Spain, Malta, China, Japan, and Canada.

You can expect more of the trend towards naturalistic, landscape-evocative planting that’s crept up on the show in recent years: I’m not sure anyone will quite outdo Dan Pearson’s Chatsworth garden of 2015 but they’re having a good stab at it. Nigel Dunnett is something of a pioneer in the field, of course, and this year takes on the RHS’s Greening Grey Britain installation; James Basson is another master and I’m looking forward to his recreation of a Maltese quarry. If it’s anything like the one he did last year it’ll be breathtaking.

Here are my picks for the gardens to look out for this year:

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The M&G Garden: James Basson

The M&G Garden: James Basson

James has been for some time now the stalking horse for the Chelsea crown: every year his gardens get better and better, his trademark understated flair producing sublime set pieces which transport you effortlessly into another environment altogether. They’re sophisticated gardens, yet deceptively simple, so you have to pay attention to appreciate the sheer brilliance of his thoughtful, intelligent design style. I’ve loved his work ever since I first saw it in Japan a few years ago: last year he won his third Chelsea gold and I think this could be his year.

The Morgan Stanley Garden: Chris Beardshaw

You always sit up and take notice when Chris’s name is on the card: this looks to be a masterpiece of subtle plant design as usual. The USP is its connection to music: the National Youth Orchestra has been exploring their emotional responses to the garden and its plants through music and have composed a piece of music inspired by the design. Expect lots of contrasts in mood and texture.

Musen Landscape SEEK Garden: Jin Yang

We’ve seen a lot of Japanese designs at Chelsea: but it is rare that a Chinese design breaks through, even though gardens were essentially invented in China many, many years before the Japanese thought of raking a pattern in a bit of gravel. So this garden by first-timer Jin Yang should be fascinating: from the picture it looks like an exquisite piece of Chinese artistry picked out in mosaics and rare rhododendrons.

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The Chengdu Silk Road Garden: Laurie Chetwood & Patrick Collins

The Chengdu Silk Road Garden: Laurie Chetwood and Patrick Collins

Just when you think it’s about time you saw a Chinese garden, two come along at once. Actually, this is about China rather than being a ‘Chinese’ garden as such; but it does take East-West trade links along the Silk Road as its theme, and specifically Sichuan province – one of the most florally diverse in the world – and the town of Chengdu which it turns out is famous for embroidery. That is the perfect excuse for a quite spectacular-looking piece of sculpture, a ‘Silk Road bridge’ spun above and round the garden as though swept up in a whirlwind. Laurie Chetwood and Patrick Collins have form with ambitious, architectural designs: this one should be a real head-turner.

The RHS Greening Grey Britain Garden: Nigel Dunnett

I’m not a big fan of the ‘installation’ gardens at Chelsea as a rule: they seem to lack an identity, more PR exercise than actual garden. But when Nigel Dunnett is behind the planting it’s never boring. This is the man who pioneered ‘meadow’ style annual flower plantings for inner city Sheffield and the London Olympics, and brought us rain gardens, too. Here he’s tackling gardening in high-rise apartments with very restricted outdoor space: his ability to think laterally could bring us the solutions we badly need.

Pavilion highlights:

Sarah Eberle is designing the Hillier stand again – she scooped gold for them (yet again – their 72nd I believe) last year with her spectacular waterfalls. Burncoose is looking at plants pollinated by moths, flies and beetles: expect Calycanthus, pollinated by beetles, and magnolias, which evolved before there were any bees so are pollinated mainly by flies.

The Hardy Plant Society celebrates its 60th birthday with 60 plants; Raymond Evison has created an entire seashore to show off his clematis; and Birmingham City Council is recreating one of eccentric inventor Rowland Emett’s whimsical kinetic sculptures in flowers. Finally, it’s always nice to see a new face, and first-timers Calamazag Nursery, from Looe in Cornwall, are going to be popular: their penchant is hardy pinks, among my favourite plants.

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The Seedlip Garden: Dr Catherine MacDonald

Small gardens:

The Fresh Gardens look a bit earnest, on paper at least, this year: though I do like the sound of the ‘clementine, coral and cappuccino’ colour scheme to ‘Inland Homes: Beneath a Mexican Sky’ by Manoj Malde. Pray for sunny days at Chelsea to do it justice, though.

The Artisan Gardens are much more promising. Sarah Eberle is back with Viking Cruises and promises date palms, citrus and succulents and inspiration from Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi, who was very into Lord of the Rings style pinnacles. We have a 17th century apothecary in The Seedlip Garden from Dr Catherine MacDonald – right up my street as it’s all about distilling (non-alcoholic) drinks from herbs. Also love the sound of The IBTC Lowestoft Broadland Boatbuilder’s Garden – a bit of a mouthful perhaps but it does feature a replica of an 800-year-old wooden boat plus lots of lovely edibles including chives, peas, garlic and kale.

Learning from the master

18 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by in design, garden design, garden history, landscaping

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Hydrangea ‘Annabelle’ catching the sunlight: note the silver-variegated shrub echoing the effect behind

This week I made something of a pilgrimage, to the garden of John Brookes OBE at Denmans in Sussex.

I have a personal debt of gratitude to pay to John Brookes as it was the 1970s edition of his classic book, The Small Garden, that formed my first ideas about garden design. In fact I shamelessly nicked (slightly adapted) one of the designs in that book for my first-ever garden in London, at a time when I was still feverishly taking notes while watching Gardeners’ World (I know, I know).

He has broken new ground in so many areas of garden design we now take for granted that his legacy can’t really be overstated. He was the first to come up with the idea of the ‘inside outside’, making garden rooms – as advocated by Lawrence Johnstone et al – an extension of the living room in the house they surround.

He was – astonishingly – the first British designer to take his inspiration from modern art, specifically Mondrian via his revolutionary geometric garden of interlocking squares for Penguin Books at Heathrow. And he was the first to create a design-focussed garden at the Chelsea Flower Show, at a time when everyone else was just creating showcases for plant nurseries.

Denmans is still his home, and where he runs his garden school. It’s looking a little tired these days, mainly I suspect because there’s just one heroic gardener looking after four acres of intensively-garden landscape and do lone battle with an encroaching army of ground elder. A garden of this stature deserves a few more staff.

But the mark of good design is that it holds up even a slightly woolly garden and gives it bones and structure. And so it is with Denman’s: it’s a softer garden than John Brookes’s usual designs in any case, and the fluid, sinuous curves and gentle naturalism are deceptive as underneath it all lies the solid, well thought out geometry and subtle design touches which are a John Brookes hallmark. Here are a few tips from my notebook I’ll be trying out once I get home.
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1: Don’t ignore the buildings. Reflect the materials used in the buildings in hard landscaping; and echo architectural features in the planting. Here a tall fastigiate yew emphasises the strong verticals in the Clock Tower.

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2. Don’t get too hung up about giving beds clear edges. At Denmans plants flow over the edges of curving gravel paths, sometimes spilling over into the hard landscaping and self-seeding into the edges, giving a soft, organic, very natural look that also, incidentally, evokes the Sussex coastline of the wider environment.

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3. Always be aware of the picture you are creating, and use sculpture to complete the scene. This sitting boy was delightful and added a focal point and a little vignette to an otherwise nice-but-ordinary wildlife pond.

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4. Create a sense of mystery and intrigue by cutting curving (not straight) paths through the planting, giving a glimpse of another part of the garden beyond but not revealing it all at once. It makes it all but impossible to resist following the path to explore further.

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5. Lawns are intrinsically boring. So make them more interesting (and save yourself some hours behind the mower) by only cutting the middle bits once a month. The outer paths you mow once a week – creating a contrast in texture and keeping the sensuous curves of the design at the fore.

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6. Remember your backgrounds – in every direction. This Achillea ‘Moonshine’ shone out in contrast with the dark purple smokebush (Cotinus coggygria) against the wall behind it: what a combination. But turn around, put the smoke bush behind you, and the brooding effect is completely gone to be replaced by airy woodland:

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Same plant, completely different effect. So as you compose your perfect combination looking one way, don’t forget to turn around and look at it the other way, too – and seize the chance to create a wholly new scene.

 

A Hampton Court takeaway

06 Monday Jul 2015

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It’s been a funny old Hampton Court Flower Show this year. Mainly because I was there not so much as gardening hack but as part of the show: on Wednesday you’d have found me in the Cookery Theatre, holding forth about all the different ways you can become self-sufficient (and that does mean you, wherever you live: for more, look out for my new bookywook, in a bookshop near you this Christmas).

But I did get the time to take a look around, while scuttling between giant fans in the doorways of the Floral Marquee: goodness but it was hot. I happened to be there on the hottest day of the week, too: 36 degrees it was. I was positively glowing.

As usual, show gardens, rose marquee and plant stands were full of good ideas to take home and make your own garden that little bit better. Here are a few of them:

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Float allium heads on a pool of water: I’ve seen this done with hellebores before, but never with alliums. What a lovely way to display those exquisite starry blooms up close.

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Grow air plants in mini terrariums: Spotted in the Floral Marquee, these are just too perfect. Terrariums (terraria, whatev) are big right now, and air plants like these tillandsia are made for them. The glass keeps humidity levels high, and the plant needs only moisture in the air to survive. If you fancy a change for the Christmas tree this year – this could be it…

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Use simple planting against textured black walls for sheer drama: Less is most definitely more in this striking planting discovered round the back of ‘Green Seam’, the Best in Show garden by Hadlow College students Stuart Charles Towner and Bethany Williams (we will, I am sure, be hearing more of these two in the not too distant future).

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Build a garden room out of things you find kicking around: Garden rooms are definitely au naturel this year. This one was on the sweet little Winnie the Pooh garden by Anthea Guthrie (one of my favourite designers): also spotted at the show were a cosy looking pod woven from willow on the City Twitchers summer garden, and a hobbit hole of a turf cave merging seamlessly into its surroundings on the Macmillan Legacy garden.

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Plant your patio: Simple but effective: pull out a paving slab or two from the patio and hey presto: instant planting opportunity. This one was breaking up the monotony of too much stone on the SABO: The Circle of Life garden.

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Reinvent the pergola: It’s not compulsory to build your pergola out of wooden cross beams set on sturdy posts. This one was an old bit of mining kit (don’t ask me what bit but it did look impressively industrial) on the Green Seam garden.

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Grow pomegranates: I suspect this one had had a little help to ripen quite this well in the UK: but you can dream. It was on the Turkish Garden of Paradise: and fruiting or not, the tree is lovely.

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Treat yourself to the Rose of the Year: I took quite a shine to the top rose for 2016, announced at the show as the next Rose of the Year has been for some time now. ‘Sunny Sky’ is a particularly fetching shade of yellow: hard to get right in the garden, but in this case spot on. It’s scented, too.

Postcard from Chelsea: Dark and light

21 Thursday May 2015

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Dark Matter
Gold and Best Fresh Garden

Now here’s a garden with a sense of drama. And ambition: I’m not sure anyone’s ever tried to explain the science behind dark matter in outer space through the medium of plants and rusted iron sculpture before. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure this attempt quite managed it (I’m still as befuddled as I ever was on the subject) but it had a lot of fun trying.

The steel rods were bent two ways at once by a chair manufacturing firm (the only ones they could find with the necessary equipment to do it) to depict the bending of light around dark matter – the only evidence we have that dark matter exists (you’ll have to excuse me if this doesn’t make sense – I’m reaching my own outer limits of knowledge here).

The garden is full of adventurous, dramatic planting combinations and huge energy and movement: ever-shifting grasses mean this garden is never still. I loved acid-yellow Hakonechloa macra ‘Aurola’ partnered with jet-black Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’, and the kidney shaped green leaves of Asarum europaeum picked up in overhanging leaves of smouldering purple Ligularia dentata ‘Othello’ – same shape, but contrasting colour and size, and a clever design detail to steal for your own garden.

Power to the people

31 Saturday May 2014

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(c) Jeffrey Tischart, Jr

(c) Jeffrey Tischart, Jr

You won’t be gardening long before you feel the need for a little electricity.

I don’t mean excitement: goodness, there’s quite enough of that what with mouse invasions and that branch falling on my greenhouse roof and stoving in several panes at once. And positive things too, like the gorgeous Ensete ventricosa (deep purple banana) which arrived on my doorstep as a foundling (unwanted gift from a non-gardener); or the loquat tree which miraculously survived losing every single branch in the heavy snows of winter 2011.

No, I mean power: the juice which runs your greenhouse heater, or lets you install a pump in your water butt so you can run a hose off it, or makes a heated propagator and thus transformation of your seed-sowing life possible. [read more…]