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The Constant Gardener

~ Meandering through a gardening life

The Constant Gardener

Tag Archives: show preview

Chelsea 2016: What to look out for

14 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by constantgardenerblog in design, garden design, news, shows

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RHS Chelsea Flower Show, show preview

GetAttachmentThe RHS launched the 2016 Chelsea Flower Show in style yesterday: we had Alan Titchmarsh interviewing Mary Berry and canapés with caviar. I felt positively spoilt.

As always the launch press event is all about the details you want to know but can’t (always) get off the press releases. So here’s the lowdown on what not to miss at Chelsea this year – and I’m not, on the whole, talking gardens:

The Queen’s 90th birthday party: Yes, HRH is a nonagenarian. It didn’t surprise me to learn that she’s now clocked up 51 visits to Chelsea: getting kicked out at 3pm on press day so she can view the gardens without the hoi polloi bothering her is one of the traditions of Chelsea I look forward to every year, mainly because it means an early shout on a Monday.

Queen Elizabeth II in the Great Pavilion at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2015.

Not bad for nearly 90, eh? Queen Elizabeth II in the Great Pavilion at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2015 (c) RHS/Bethany Clarke

Anyway: the RHS is laying on an exhibition taken from their back catalogue of photos, plus a floral arch inspired by made for Queen Victoria in Reigate, of all places.

Poppies will be much in evidence and no doubt much discussed: an installation of 300,000 crocheted poppies (yes, you did read that right) will cover 2000 square metres either side of the walkway leading up to the recently denuded front facade of the Royal Hospital in a sea of red. It is – as one journo pointed out – reminiscent of the Tower of London poppy installation a couple of years ago: but cosier.

Poppies

Boy, that’s a lot of poppies…

Poor old Alan got a lot of stick for his part in wiping away centuries of ancient tree and replacing them with a new design by George Carter: but as he said, ‘a Grade I listed building by Christopher Wren deserved better than an overgrown Victorian shrubbery’. Quite.

AMPgarden

Ann-Marie Powell is designing the ‘RHS GGBG HHH’ (as we will henceforth refer to it)

Ann-Marie Powell is designing the RHS garden (better to just say that than its full title, The RHS Greening Grey Britain Garden for Health, Happiness and Horticulture – snappy, eh?). I love Ann-Marie’s gardens: they burst with a kind of irrepressible energy, all enthusiasm and verve. There will be much gorgeousness including a perennial meadow, kitchen garden and demonstration beds. And you can walk through it. Divine.

There’s a new award: the poor folk who work their socks off constructing every painstaking detail of the show gardens yet barely getting a mention in the footnotes by comparison with the glitzy designers (a bit like the drummer in a glam rock band) will – at long last – get their very own award, the Best Construction Award. All gardens which score ‘excellent’ for construction on the judging sheets will go forward automatically for the gong.

There are seven female designers on Main Avenue this year: not, the RHS was at pains to assure us, because of any particular positive discrimination during the selection process but rather because of all the chat last year about the fact that there were only two prompted some of our best female designers to think about putting themselves forward. It’s still not 50:50 (there are 17 show gardens) but it’s a good start.

Artist's illustration - Hillier in Springtime designed by Sarah Eberle

Sarah Eberle’s design for Hillier

Sarah Eberle is designing the Hillier Garden in the Pavilion (as well as her beautiful watery Artisan Garden). Seasoned team member Ricky Dorlay – 50 Chelseas and counting – is there though of course the designer of the last several dozen gold medal winning exhibits previous to this, Andy McIndoe, and ever-smiley plantswoman Pip Bensley have moved on to pastures new. We’re promised a more designerly garden with a central water feature and plant groupings which will work not only with each other, but also in your garden. It’ll be right alongside their old plot around the monument, now taken by Bowden Hostas and the Orient Express’s sister train: the urge to compare-and-contrast will be hard to resist.

Nurseries are going conceptual: several are working with designer Kate Gould to bring a ‘more conceptual bent’ to exhibits in the Pavilion. The Mayan inspired temple pyramid at T3 Plants should be good…

You can wear a bobble suit with some kind of sensor system that lights up and tells you when you’re gardening badly. Have a go at digging on the stand and the team from the University of Coventry will tell you why your back always aches afterwards.

There are two new RHS Ambassadors: Young Hort Jamie Butterworth (is it me or are gardeners getting younger, like policemen and teachers?) and the redoubtable Jekka McVicar have both been recruited to the RHS cause. Both already do such a lot for the RHS we’ll be hard put to spot the difference, but it’s great that their huge efforts and achievements are being recognised.

 

Chelsea here we come!

RHS Chelsea sneak peek

11 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by constantgardenerblog 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!

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