Although I class myself as a country boy, I have spent the majority of my life living as an urbanite. I count myself lucky to have spent the last twelve years in London, witnessing the capital’s unrelenting, exciting reinvention. Seemingly impervious to recessions and economic turbulence, areas once considered unsavoury are now described in terms of ‘hip’, ‘edgy’ and ‘innovative’. Even Archway, the urban centre closest to where I live, is being revitalised in a way I never imagined possible.

When I was at university the area around London’s King’s Cross station, three miles down the road from Archway, was a seedy, decaying, post-industrial no-go area. How things have changed. Twenty years on Kings Cross is quite the place to live, work, shop and relax, boasting parks and gardens that are genuinely vibrant and modern. It’s a whole new piece of London with a brand new postcode, N1C.

It was ultimately the move of the Eurostar terminal from Waterloo to St Pancras that triggered the development of neighbouring King’s Cross. The fashion for industrial architecture and the need for large office spaces made 67 acres of land, cupped by the Regent’s Canal and served by two major stations, especially appealing. Happily the developers understood the importance of creating an impressive, beautiful, extensive public realm from the outset, preserving 40% of the site for designed open spaces. A thorough account of these could fill a book. Assuming you may not have time to read such a tome, here’s a very brief introduction to some of my favourite King’s Cross green spots.

Granary Square

Constructed where once barges offloaded their cargo, this imposing public square is the epicentre of King’s Cross. The main event is the layout of 1,000 fountains which are choreographed so that they begin the day cool and misty and end the day with a spectacular light show. On warm days, like this Monday, the square becomes an urban beach, with children and adults dodging (or not!) the jets of cooling water. In the background is Central Saint Martins, the world-famous art school that produced Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen, Jarvis Cocker, Lucian Freud and Antony Gormley.

Although I am not a huge fan of artificial grass I particularly like the wide, south-facing steps sweeping down from the square to the canalside. The steps sometimes set the scene for performances and installations, but on hot days they are amply utilised for casual gatherings and all-important tan topping-upping.

Gasholder Park

This is my favourite public space within King’s Cross. If I had the means to move here, into one of the fabulous apartments designed by Wilkinson Eyre, I would. The Pancras Gasworks were built in the 1850s and were finally decommissioned in the year 2000. Gasholder No. 8, the largest of the iconic structures that once dominated Kings’ Cross’ skyline, provides the monumental framework to a lawned park bounded by a circular, mirrored pergola.

When the redevelopment of King’s Cross began the beautiful cast iron structure was dismantled piece by piece, painstakingly restored in Yorkshire and moved to a new home north of the canal two years later. This is contemporary landscape architecture of the highest quality, realised by Bell Phillips Architects with planting by Dan Pearson.

Handyside Gardens

Dan Pearson rears his tousled head once again at Handyside Park, where he has fashioned a serpentine public space from a straggly strip of land between Waitrose and smart new apartment buildings. The plan of the park reflects the pattern of railway sidings that once ran through the site, while the planting is inspired by flora commonly found along railway embankments.

The railway has, necessarily, also influenced the technical design of the gardens. The tunnels that run from the north into King’s Cross Station are just 4.5 metres below ground level. This limits the depth of the soil and the number of trees that can be planted. Raised beds, bordered with corten steel, are packed with masses of billowing perennials, shrubs and trees. I especially enjoy the snaking rill which makes its way from the sandy playground at the northern end of Handyside Gardens, through a decked seating area, arriving clear and clean at the southern end.

Guided tours of King’s Cross’ public spaces are bookable online, including on the ‘Open House’ weekend of the 17th and 18th September.

Handyside Gardens Plant List

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If I were to win the lottery, The Salutation is the house I’d want to live in. I’d spend every spring and summer there, before overwintering in Capri, or the Caribbean; I can’t decide which. It’s probably not a choice I’ll ever be called on to make, but I like to think about it nevertheless.

Our first visit to The Salutation each spring is one I always look forward to; foremost because it’s an opportunity to admire the garden’s fine structure before it becomes shrouded in foliage and flowers. Whilst Edwin Lutyens would surely recognise today’s layout as his own, The Salutation is an unusual combination of informal features, such as Lake Patricia and the Woodland Garden, and the elegant formality for which the architect is famed. Packed into three acres on the edge of Sandwich, every inch of the garden is on show, which must be quite a challenge for the gardening team lead by Head Gardener Steve Edney.

Over winter there have been some minor changes to the layout; the removal of some hedges; the creation of a new area just off the long border, which I suspect might be an extension of the tropical garden; and a major overhaul of the space surrounding the potting sheds and greenhouses. Everything was looking particularly spick and span when we visited last weekend to renew our season tickets and get some fresh air.

The Salutation’s tulips and hyacinths are way ahead of my own, basking on the warm, dry, south-facing bank that skirts the long border. The scent of hyacinths was intoxicating, and the hum of red-tailed bumble bees so loud it was almost deafening. Accompanying the bees with their coarse calls were innumerable seagulls, a reminder that the English Channel is not far away. In December 2013 the briny came too close for comfort when it flooded a significant part of the garden, including the Long Border. Four years later, apart from the unevenness of the path, one would never know the garden had been inundated with salty water.

Within moments Him Indoors had taken to a garden bench to consult his phone, which these days appears to be superglued to his hands. It seems gardens are no distraction from the allure of Facebook. Behind him in this picture are several clumped banana plants, still carefully wrapped in fleece and hessian lest they experience a late, damaging frost.

Having taken the obligatory shot of the Queen Anne inspired facade from the end of the double borders, and not a good one I’m sorry to say, I ventured into the Woodland Garden.

Since the great flood, the Woodland Garden had been left to its own devices, becoming slightly down at heel. Over winter the garden’s winding paths have been spruced up. There are new vistas into the rest of the garden and evidence of new planting.

Every year I marvel at the quantity of blue and white Anemone blanda that flood out of the Woodland Garden onto the lawn, surging like a floral tide towards the perennial borders.

At the Holm Oak Walk one is reminded exactly who designed this handsome garden. The immaculately clipped evergreen columns, their simple underplanting of roses and lavender, the mighty oak gate in the garden wall, presided over by an exaggerated key stone, are all Lutyens’ signatures. When either side of the Holm Oak Walk the gardens are frothing and fizzing, this stately axis remains calm and quiet.

I never seem to hit the White Garden at quite the right moment. As much as I like the concept of single colour gardens, this one doesn’t do a lot for me. The layout is clever, with deep, box-edged borders and narrow paths, but even the addition of plants with black foliage doesn’t lift the slightly melancholy air. A tall specimen of Daphne bholua ‘Peter Smithers’ provides delicious scent on the way out.

I would much rather be on the close-mown bowling green, where the borders to either side are stuffed with an artful mix of foliage and flowers sharing similar reddish tones. At this time of year there is less to see, but an edging of Bergenia cordifolia ‘Winterglut’ provides both burgundy foliage and waxy, magenta-pink flowers in spring. I spotted a couple of rogue Muscari macrocarpum ‘Golden Fragrance’ in one patch, a bulb I have tried and failed to grow, but which is lovely enough for me to try again.

The Yellow Garden, at the end of the circuit, is crowned with a circlet of narcissi in spring. More hyacinths have been added, which is as good for the bees as it is for visitors. This is a lovely idea that anyone with a lawn might replicate: and it relieves one of the obligation to cut the grass until all the bulb foliage has died right down.

The clock ticking on the car park we were in and out of the garden within an hour, but not without acquiring a pot of Moroccan spearmint (Mentha spicata) and a single stick of Clerodendrum bungei, a plant I have hankered after for years. It’s a shrub that throws up suckers hither and thither, but with large corymbs of pink blossom in late summer it is worth any hassle.

Ten years after opening to the public following extensive restoration, The Salutation is hosting a series of masterclasses, courses and tours throughout 2017. Click here for more details.

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I am taking a different approach to my Chelsea Flower Show coverage this year. Recent events and the amount of time I am able to spend at the show have persuaded me to devote more time to enjoying the exhibits and less time casting a critic’s eye over them. Added to which, I have the great pleasure of hosting Helen of Oz during Chelsea week, so I don’t want to spend every evening glued to my computer keyboard as I usually do.

A further reason for getting slightly less swept along by the Chelsea tsunami is that in a couple of weeks I will be visiting the first ever Chatsworth Flower Show. The RHS have been gracious enough to issue me with a press pass, which means I’ll be able to take a sneak peek on the Tuesday before the show opens to the public. Chatsworth is a beautiful venue and will provide a sublime setting for a new national flower show. Hence I am saving some of my blogging energy for reporting on that exciting event.

There has been much negativity in the media about the declining number of show gardens on Chelsea’s Main Avenue, down to a new low of 8 from a high of 17 last year. The dramatic downturn is attributed to sponsors tightening their belts and regulars such as The Telegraph and Laurent Perrier taking a year off. To take a contrary view, perhaps this turn of events it is not such a bad thing. In my opinion the show gardens attract disproportionate attention and detract from enormous talent of those nurserymen and women who exhibit in the Great Pavilion. Let’s enjoy a break from the excesses of the stratospheric show garden budgets and enjoy the simplicity of good plants well-grown. And there is nothing like austerity for sorting the wheat from the chaff. Let’s see what can be achieved at Chelsea with fewer pennies and a little more ingenuity.

Another challenge for the RHS is the imminent departure of overall sponsor M&G Investments, with a new benefactor yet to be announced. Given the global influences displayed in this year’s garden designs, might the next sponsor be a foreign one? It would not surprise me. For their final outing as sponsor M&G have hired James Basson – he of the gardens so natural that they could be, well, natural – to create a garden inspired by an abandoned Maltese quarry. This should be a walk in the park for James Basson, who designs sustainable, no-irrigation, minimum-maintenance gardens using locally sourced plants. There will be monumental pillars of limestone planted with grasses, evergreens, perennials and ground cover plants unique to Malta. The rest of the plot will be divided into a series of zones, each with its own ecology, from shrubland through garrigue landscape to cliff top. A pool represents the void left behind when a stone block is quarried.

If the sun comes out, bringing the golden Maltese limestone to life, there’s a real chance of James Basson achieving a matching medal, and his forth at Chelsea. With few other gardens displaying any originality, Best in Show must also be a genuine possibility.

This year’s garden designs have been influenced by the landscapes of China, Japan, Canada and Mexico with only a handful drawing on the British landscape for inspiration. Greening Grey Britain, designed by Nigel Dunnett, aims to demonstrate how an urban garden can fulfil multiple needs, providing social space, functional storage, supporting biodiversity and harnessing excess rainfall. It promises to be a scheme from which many of us city dwellers might draw inspiration.

Those who favour more traditional gardens – by which I mean those that contrast clipped box with ‘naturalistic’ multi-stemmed trees and fill the spaces in between with a blousy mix of umbels pierced through with lupins, peonies and foxgloves – will appreciate Lee Beestal’s 500 Years of Covent Garden. The design promises an oasis of green, anchored at each corner by an apple tree (multi-stemmed of course) and presided over by two steel arches painted to match those at Covent Garden, which are a blue-green colour. With a shaded, comfortable-looking central seating area this garden is a guaranteed crowd pleaser and will no doubt provide the setting for numerous television interviews over the coming days.

Morgan Stanley have partnered with Chris Beardshaw again to produce a garden which won’t scare the horses, but which might win a gold medal. Inspired by fractal geometry and patterns found in nature, music and art this garden has similar influences to Nick Bailey’s Beauty of Mathematics garden in 2016, but offers little that’s new or original. “A sinuous path moves through three distinct garden areas, from verdant woodland to a central oak loggia and out onto a sun-drenched terrace” trills the RHS website. Haven’t we heard that somewhere before?

At least three gardens have strong oriental influences. The most prominent, occupying the famous island site, is the Chengdu Silk Road Garden designed by Laurie Chetwood and Patrick Collins. This garden has the potential to dazzle, but I am rarely convinced by so much hard landscaping in a show garden. In this instance a series of rising and falling fins in shades of flesh pink and red resemble a bloodied whale carcass. This isn’t the easiest of garden features to soften with planting, although I’ve never had the opportunity to walk that particular walk. Nevertheless we are promised a showcase of some of the many garden plants familiar in the West that have their origins in China’s Sichuan Province, as well as a design that can be appreciated from every angle.

Interestingly, the original design for this garden, as presented at the RHS Early Spring Plant Fair, was strikingly different. My understanding has always been that show gardens had to stick to the design originally submitted or risk being marked down, but perhaps hard times have made the RHS more lenient.

When I arrive at Chelsea on Tuesday the first garden I will make a beeline for is Kazuyuki Ishihara’s ‘Gosho No Niwa’ (No Wall, No War) which will be nestling in a shaded spot alongside the other Artisan Gardens. Mr Ishihara is a Chelsea veteran, returning for his 12th year. He speaks almost no English, but has more than mastered the art of winning gold medals at Chelsea. I suspect this year will be no exception.

The design for Gosho no Niwa possesses all of Mr Ishihara’s usual signatures – tumbling water, colourful acers, irises, moss and dwarf pines – and will be executed with absolute precision. My money is on this winning Best Artisan Garden.

In the same category, Hagakure (Hidden Leaves) designed by Shuko Noda, sets out to create a sacred and peaceful space away from the noise and stress of daily life. The colour scheme is predominantly white, a symbol of purity and sacredness in Japan. Quite what happened to the azalea-filled extravaganza that was the Seek Garden, designed by Randle Siddeley in honour of British botanist Ernest Henry Wilson, I do not know. I guess the sponsor must have pulled out at the last-minute. This is a great pity as the Seek Garden promised to flout almost every rule of modern-day Chelsea garden design by packing in hoards of rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias, viburnums and acers. This harks back to the days when these were the very plants that suburban gardeners flocked to the Royal Hospital grounds to see. I, for one, shall miss the Seek Garden that mysteriously hid.

 

 

 

 

Leaving me colder than a cod in Arctic waters are gardens such as the Mind Trap Garden designed by Ian Price. OK, so the garden sets out to highlight the plight of those living with depression but, really, aren’t there more inventive ways to do so? The device of using doors / fences / barriers to denote mental or social barriers and cheery, bright plants to illustrate the end of a journey from a dark place has been done to death. This garden employs hackneyed methods which are almost as depressing as the subject in hand.

 

The space that’s been left vacant by hard-up sponsors has been filled with five plotsctentatively assigned to various BBC Radio 2 presenters. The Chris Evans Taste Garden has been inspired by Mary Berry (haven’t we all?) and is designed by Jon Wheatley. The Jo Whiley Scent Garden is inspired by aromas that transport us to a moment in time or a place that feels familiar, such as woodland walks, rain on warm paving, fresh earth or freshly cut flowers. In the same odd vein, visitors will also have the chance to tune in to Zoe Ball’s Listening Garden and brush against Jeremy Vine’s Texture Garden, although it’s unlikely anyone will get their hands on any of the blooms in Anneka Rice’s Colour Cutting Garden designed by Sarah Raven. It’s commendable that the RHS have moved fast to fill the spaces left by others, but the offerings are all remarkably similar to superior gardens that have gone before, expecially the designs by James Alexander Sinclair (Zoe Ball’s Listening Garden) and Matt Keightley (Jeremy Vine’s Texture Garden), below.

In summary, and it pains me to say so, I am not expecting 2017 to be a vintage Chelsea Flower Show, particularly after the splendid highs of 2016. A low show garden count, a dearth of new talent and extreme lack of originality has set my expectation levels pretty low. I very much hope my pessimism might be proven ill-founded and that I will find solace, as I always do, in the Great Pavilion, where high standards rarely falter.

Come back throughout this week to find out if I hit the nail on the head or have had to eat my hat as I report on the good, bad and indifferent from Chelsea 2017. TFG.

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When I go to the Chelsea Flower Show, I want to see flowers. Whilst in the Great Pavilion this expectation is met in spades, occasionally some of the garden designers forget and start getting a bit too green, or worse, brown. This is fine, but don’t expect me to like it. For all its faults, and there were a few, the Chengdu Silk Road garden delivered flowers, and glorious ones at that. There were great mounds of rhododendrons and silken peonies, fragrant roses, rocketing primulas and blushing poppies. The spine of brightly coloured ‘mountains’ aside, this is a Chelsea garden that a visitor from the 1960s might have recognised and I, for one, was glad of it on such a sombre day.

One can say two things for certain about the Chengdu Silk Road Garden: it is bursting with colour and unlike any other garden that’s occupied the notorious island site in recent years. This pivotal plot, awkwardly located on top of one of London’s main sewers has seen its highs (Best in Show: Laurent Perrier Chatsworth Garden in 2015) and its lows. It has also attracted some of Chelsea’s quirkier designs. Anyone who takes on the island site in its entirety (last year it was divided between Sam Ovens and Diarmuid Gavin) must design a garden that can be admired from every angle and make an impression without any kind of backdrop. In that respect, the Chengdu Silk Road Garden did an excellent job. The spine of brightly painted panels, carefully constructed to minimise their weight, divided the plot effectively, allowing designers Laurie Chetwood and Patrick Collins to treat either side of the garden differently.

From the southern aspect we were treated to undulating mounds of foliage, beneath a canopy of neatly pruned Viburnum rhytidophyllum (leather leaf viburnum), a shrub I have never especially liked but which was perfect in this scheme. Grasses such as Miscanthus sinensis and Festuca ovina added texture.

At the western-most tip the grasses gave way to peonies, primulas and buddleias before rising to a crescendo of colour in the form of rhododendrons, astilbes, multitudinous primulas and gorgeous Meconopsis ‘Lingholm’. This is the kind of planting I love to see, and also a reminder of just how many of our favourite garden plants hail from China. It was not for nothing that British Botanist Ernest Henry Wilson titled his 1929 book ‘China, Mother of Gardens’.

Ignoring the spine and central ‘theatre’, which I found myself having to do rather a lot, the planting could have been transported directly from one of my favourite Cornish gardens, or those that enjoy the warming impact of the Gulf Stream in Scotland or Ireland.

Back to the structure, of which I have been a little dismissive, there was a very definite point to it. Chengdu, the provincial capital of land-locked Sichuan, was once the capital of the Chinese Shu kingdom. Chengdu is situated on a vast plain, but surrounded by forested mountains, which the panels represent. You may also recognise Chengdu as the ‘hometown’ of the giant panda, a fact curiously illustrated by a pair of cuddly pandas sitting at the entrance to the garden. I suppose it was too much to expect real pandas.

Since ancient times Sichuan has been known as ‘The Abundant Land’ thanks to its fertile soil and favourable climate. Within the province, in a place called Dujiangyan, one can find the world’s oldest dam-less irrigation system which is still in use today. It’s been effective since 256BC. In the garden water plays a small part, running around the edge of the circular platform which depicts the legend of the Sun and Immortal Birds … that’s another story, which I won’t embellish now.

A series of overlapping ‘tongues’ in various shades of red and pink represent the silk road that ran through Sichuan, linking this ‘Country of Heaven’ to the rest of the world, permitting ceramics, spices, textiles and plants to reach the western world. Just like our food sources, we tend to forget where our plants come from. It was surprising to hear just how many visitors were just discovering the origins of their favourite plants as they admired the spectacle.

After the show, the garden will be moved to Chengdu and used to launch an ambitious city-wide project called ‘Flower-shrouded Chengdu’. This will include building twenty large-scale gardens in the city suburbs. From my experience of China, this is a good thing, and I can imagine the garden sitting well in an urban environment. To Western eyes the reds and pinks may appear a little brash, but in China these are auspicious colours symbolising good fortune and joy.

If I could have changed one thing about this garden, I would have removed the insect hotels from the sides of the coloured panels. Although the garden was drawing in a phenomenal number of bumble bees, these little boxes were just clutter – and that’s coming from someone who is prone to clutter. Next to go would have been the curious perspex lozenges hovering over the garden like some kind of surveillance equipment. There was enough artifice in the garden without the addition of these. And finally, I’d have liked to see the planting come a little closer to edges, especially at the eastern end of the site where the colours cooled beautifully to yellow and white.

So, on the whole a brave and confident treatment of this challenging site and a garden very much better than I had expected. Silver Gilt was well deserved for a garden of such epic proportions filled so beautifully with plants we all know and love. As China’s influence in the world grows further, I expect we will see more Chinese influence at Chelsea in future. I would very much like to see India following suit.

PLANT LIST

To follow very shortly.

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Given the paucity of show gardens at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, I regret not having written more about last year’s crop, which had a different pedigree altogether. I hope to correct one such oversight now, by comparing and contrasting Morgan Stanley’s two most recent Chelsea gardens, both designed by Chris Beardshaw.

This year’s garden, inspired by ‘fractal geometry and patterns found in nature, music, art and communities’ was one of the most accessible at the show, and hence always a front runner for People’s Choice, which it duly won. A Silver Gilt medal from the RHS judges puzzled many show-goers, but in the end the public placed this simple yet effective garden on a pedestal. At a Chelsea devoid of lawns and low on the usual swathes of early summer prairie, Chris Beardshaw delivered a crowd-pleasing combination of cool, shaded woodland and bright, sundrenched perennials, with an imposing oak and limestone loggia sitting firmly at the garden’s heart. The woodland area had Helen of Oz’s heart melting, packed as it was with plants that would shrivel up and die in the Australian outback. An effortless combination of ferns, hostas and primulas, punctuated by rocketing cardiocrinums, was both soothing and uplifting. Not challenging, not fashionable; just what many of us would be happy to achieve in our own gardens.

Because of the gaps left by the gardens that failed to secure sponsorship, the Morgan Stanley garden had the unusual advantage of running along Main Avenue rather than away from it. This made the whole scheme appear larger and more impressive, although it was impossible to get anywhere near the perimeter, so enraptured were the crowds. An extremely fine Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) anchored the perennial end whilst tender, green field maples (Acer campestre) and statuesque box (Buxus sempervirens) grounded the other. Classic hornbeam hedges provided a backdrop.

A central loggia crafted from oak and limestone was monumental in its proportions and struck me as a little too bulky and dominant within the space. I’d like to have seen some planters or seating sheltering beneath the mighty canopy to give the structure a greater sense of purpose and improve its relationship to the garden. American artist Craig Schaffer created three pieces of abstract sculpture for the show garden, inspired by fractal structures found in the natural world. They reminded me quite a lot of broken vinyl records spliced together, but I appreciated how well they fitted into the overall scheme.

Chris Beardshaw, who was on the garden whilst we were admiring it, seems like a thoroughly charming man. A group of school-age children had come along to show him a project they had been working on and he presented them with a plant of Scabiosa ‘Butterfly Blue’, explaining its appeal to pollinating insects. The children and their teacher were clearly overjoyed. And instead of commissioning one of the famous Chelsea plant factories to grow the material for his garden, Chris decided to grow most of the herbaceous plants himself, which he described as a ‘magical’ and ‘thrilling’ experience. Not every plant was in peak condition, the echiums for example had gone over, but knowing Chris had grown them himself made that alright by me.

Now that the show is over the garden will be recycled by a charity called Groundwork that offers young people training and job opportunities. Elements of the garden will split between three educational community schemes in East London where its special music and rhythm will live on. Follow this link for a 360º view of the garden.

Returning to 2016, I recall the Morgan Stanley Garden for Great Ormond Street Hospital as being equally soothing and restful, but perhaps not as outstanding as some of the other designs that year. Nevertheless it was awarded a gold medal, and as time has gone on, and my own taste has developed, I find I appreciate it more.

The standout moment in this garden for me was the sculpture ‘Fallen Deodar’ by Jilly Sutton. Fashioned from cedar and verdigris bronze, the mask’s serene countenance and gentle repose made me imagine a gentle giant slumbering in a secret garden. Key plants in the scheme were hesperis – such a lovely clear light purple; Iris sibirica – which has become something of a Chelsea staple in recent years; camassia – providing the same upright accents as the cardiocrinums did in 2017, and the acers, their crowns uplifted, billowing gently in the breeze.

The garden was moved after the show to a shaded, second-floor rooftop location at Great Ormond Street Hospital to provide a private, reflective space for parents and families of children undergoing treatment. With so many Chelsea gardens going on to find permanent homes in communities, hospitals and hospices it would be interesting to hear from sponsors how they have fared. One assumes they must be simplified and modified to ease the burden of maintenance and to provide a longer period of interest.

In conclusion, here we have two gardens for the same sponsor, but with very different guiding principles. Chris Beardshaw’s knack of designing show gardens with broad appeal is important given both will live on in the public domain. His gardens combine a certain familiarity and Englishness, whilst also inspiring onlookers to push the boundaries within their own plots. Post Chelsea 2017, I’d wager there will be far more attempts at sinuous paths through beds of hostas and primulas, and trips to the garden centre to source cardiocrinums and fancy-coloured lupins than there will be efforts to recreate parched quarries. A lack of gimmicks and plants that date ensure Chris’ gardens for Morgan Stanley will stand the test of time.

Plant List 2017

Perennial Sunny Section

Agapanthus
Alchemilla mollis
Alyogyne cuneiformis
Angelica archangelica
Anthemis punctata subsp. cupaniana
Anchusa ‘Loddon Royalist’
Aralia elata ‘Variegata’
Campanula persicaria ‘Telham Beauty’
Centaurea montana ‘Jordy’
Cirsium rivulare ‘Atropurpureum’
Cirsium ‘Trevor’s Blue Wonder’
Dianthus ‘Shirley Temple’
Echium fastuosum
Erigeron karvinskianus syn. mucron
Erigeron ‘Snow White’
Euphorbia mellifera
Foeniculum vulgare
Geranium ‘Czakor’
Geranium ‘Biokovo’
Geranium clarkei ‘Kashmir Blue’
Geranium ‘Johnson’s Blue’
Geranium macrorrhizum
Geranium maculatum ‘Espresso’
Geranium palmatum
Geranium renardii
Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’
Iberis ‘Pink Ice’
Iris ‘Sable’
Iris ‘Bishop’s Robe’
Iris ‘Natchez Trace’
Iris ‘Night Owl’
Linaria purpurea ‘Canon Went’
Lupinus ‘Beefeater’
Lupinus ‘Manhattan Lights’
Lupinus ‘Persian Slipper’
Lysimachia ciliata ‘Firecracker’
Mukgenia ‘Nova Flame’
Nepeta ‘Walker’s Low’
Paeonia lactiflora ‘Red Charm’
Peony ‘Krinkled White’
Phlomis italica
Salvia ‘Caradonna’
Scabiosa ‘Butterfly Blue’
Silybum marianum
Veronica ‘Shirley Blue’

Shrubs and Herbs

Grevillea rosmarinifolia
Pinus leucodermis ‘Nana’
Westringia fruticosa ‘White’

Perennial Shady Section

Alchemilla mollis
Anemone ‘Wild Swan’
Astilbe ‘Fanal’
Brunnera ‘Alexander’s Great’
Camassia ‘White’
Cardiocrinum giganteum
Chaerophyllum hirsutum ‘Roseum’
Geranium ‘Biokovo’
Geranium ‘Mayflower’
Hakonechloa
Helleborus argutifolius
Hosta ‘Devon Green’
Hosta ‘Abiqua Drinking Gourd’
Hosta ‘Flemish Sky’
Hosta ‘Patriot’
Hosta ‘Regal Splendor’
Iris ‘Gerald Darby’
Lamium orvala
Luzula
Primula beesiana
Ranunculus aconitifolius ‘Flore Pleno’
Rosa spinosisima
Tellima grandiflora

Ferns

Asplenium scolopendrium
Cyrtomium falcatum
Dryopteris affinis
Matteuccia struthiopteris
Osmunda regalis

Trees, Hedges, Topiary, Shrubs

Carpinus betulus
Acer campestre
Buxus sempervirens
Pinus sylvestris
Taxus baccata

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Last week history was made with the opening of London’s first Floating Pocket Park at Merchant Square, Paddington. Measuring 730sq metres this new open space treads water in Paddington Basin, near the start of the Grand Union Canal. The design is by Tony Woods, who also masterminded the garden on top of the John Lewis department store on Oxford Street. The Floating Pocket Park provides a new, publically accessible centrepiece for an area of the city that’s completely reinvented itself over the last ten years and which is now home to some of the country’s leading businesses, including Marks and Spencer. Tony clearly knows a thing or two about greening awkward spaces, but required the services of a marine engineer rather than an architect to keep this unique project afloat.

London is one of the greenest cities on the planet, but also one of the most polluted. And, although our capital is relatively low-rise in global terms, it’s also highly populous. Spending time regularly by the coast, I can really discern the difference in air quality between town and country.  Some horrific statistics were released recently measuring the amount of pollution one hoovers through one’s nostrils on various forms of London transport. Let’s just say buses are no longer my preferred way of getting around! Pocket parks are one way of absorbing air pollution and putting oxygen back into the atmosphere, plus a means of creating useable space in densely populated urban areas.

As I recall, there was no mention in the report of travelling by barge, which is how the materials used to create The Floating Pocket Park arrived on site. The designer and his client felt it would easier and less intrusive for residents if traditional methods of transport were used. The design of the park allows people to walk over the water on a series of decked platforms and walkways. On Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time, Tony explained the limitations of designing a garden that floats on water and yet is not connected directly with it. There’s weight and balance to think about, as well as irrigation. Then there are the strong winds, shade and harsh reflections created by tall buildings surrounding the basin.

Tony’s scheme for the Floating Pocket Park features an open lawn area, densely planted raised borders and communal seating. A contemporary shelter provides support for plants, shade for visitors and opportunities for the park to host events. The main areas of the garden are planted with a mix of wind tolerant grasses that will play in the breeze, and nectar-rich flowers such as alliums and salvias. The garden boasts an independent wildlife island planted with native waterside plants including great burnet, purple loosestrife and yellow flag iris to encourage birds and waterfowl to feed and nest.

 
As this is the 21st Century, the park has been equipped with free, super-fast Wi-Fi to encourage office workers and residents to stay connected whilst outside. And if that’s not enough incentive to get out and explore what West London has to offer, there are self-drive electric boats available to hire which can be used to explore Paddington, Camden and Little Venice, or to use as floating meeting rooms to encourage innovative and creative thinking. Sounds a lot better than sitting in an office to me.

The Floating Pocket Park has permission to remain in situ for 5 years, during which time it will evolve and mature. The planting, though simple, has been carefully chosen to provide year-round interest, from alliums and wallflowers in spring, to salvias and astrantias in summer, followed by anemones and liriope in autumn and dogwoods, holly and hellebores in winter. Where once there was murky water and unusable space, there’s now seating, foliage, shelter and the hum of bees foraging among flowers. Here’s to the Floating Pocket Park and all who bob up and down on her.

Plant List

Anemone hybrida ‘Honorine Jobert’

Astrantia major alba ‘Large White’ 

Allium ‘Mont Blanc’

Allium ‘Purple Sensation’ 

Allium sphaerocephalon

Cornus alba ‘Sibirica’

Erysimum ‘Bowles’s Mauve’

Hebe albicans ‘Red Edge’

Hydrangea aspera ‘Villosa group’

Helleborus x sahinii ‘Winterbells’ 

Hakonechloa macra 

Ilex crenata 

Liriope muscari

Perovskia atriplicifolia ‘Blue Spire’ 

Prunus serrula ‘Tibetica’

Sarcococca hookeriana var. humilis

Salvia nemorosa ‘Caradonna’

Stipa tenuissima



Today the famous British weather excelled itself … in drenching everyone from Mary Berry to Alan Titchmarsh, in flattening countless delphiniums and in spoiling what might have been a glorious preview of the nation’s newest flower show at Chatsworth in Derbyshire. Fortunately the gardening cognoscenti are not readily thwarted by a drop of rain, a patch of boggy turf or gusting wind and the show went on … at least until lunchtime when Health and Safety decided enough was enough and cleared the showground lest someone get flattened by a flying fuchsia. The floral marquees were the the first to be evacuated as they looked ready to take off and land in the river Derwent. Poor Lee Bestall’s metallic cows spent most of the time on their sides in the meadow (I was always told it was going to rain if cows were sitting down), and the paths on Sam Ovens’ garden were rapidly turning into impromptu water features. Those exhibitors who didn’t brave the weather today have a nasty surprise when they turn up tomorrow morning. My advice if you’ve got a ticket for the show is to wear wellies, and have spare socks and shoes in the car for the drive home.

The press tent was filled with journalists, writers, photographers and bloggers warming their hands on cups of tea before teasing apart soggy maps to work out where to go and get wet and muddy next. TV crews battled with soggy sound booms and tried to keep their presenters dry. Meanwhile designers tried hard not to notice the flowers being torn from their carefully cultivated plants as the judges approached in their sou’westers, clutching slippery clipboards and damp score cards. Hats off to Alan Titchmarsh for being the best dressed man I have ever seen in wet weather gear and to Raymond Blanc for ignoring the weather entirely and donning a black suit, white shirt and smart shoes. Mary Berry, who would look glamorous after 5 days at Glastonbury, kept standards up for the ladies.

It’s all rather a pity as the setting for the new show, even in driving rain, is majestic. The layout that the RHS have adopted for Chatsworth is spacious, and should make for a relaxed event with lots of wonderful picnicking opportunities. As at Hampton Court, some of the gardens suffer from lack of adequate backdrop, which is the reason why I wish the RHS would invest in slightly less obtrusive structures and signage for their shows. Even in dim light the bright white pavilions and restaurants distract from what’s in front of them, and as a photographer they are a complete curse.
 

I had three favourite gardens, about which I shall share more when I’ve downloaded all my photographs. They were Sam Ovens’ Wedgwood Garden: A Classic Re-imagined Garden, which was standing up to the elements remarkably well; Neil Sutcliffe’s Cruse Bereavement Care: ‘A Time for Everything’ and Lee Bestall’s Experience Peak District and Derbyshire Garden. Others, such as the Brewin Dolphin Garden by Jo Thompson and the Agriframes Garden by Melinda Thomas and Fleur Porter, has very much suffered the brunt of the weather and might perk up later in the week.

I’ll be returning tomorrow when I hope the wind might have died down sufficiently for me to enjoy a peak inside the two floral marquees. In the meantime, spare a thought for these dancers, braving the elements to launch the Brewin Dolphin garden at 10am this morning. TFG.

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“A classical garden in a modern city. serenity in the midst of urban hustle and bustle. Ingenious imitation of nature by man”

The English language printed guide for Nan Lian Garden is so interesting and comprehensive that I was almost tempted to repeat the text word-for-word rather than describe this lovely place in my own words. What is evident from the narrow, fold-out leaflet is that the government of Hong Kong is very proud of the garden it commissioned in 2003, and which opened to the public in 2006. So proud indeed, that they have already applied to have Nan Lian Garden and neighbouring Chi Lin Nunnery recognised as a World Heritage Site. I wish them well with that, although I suspect both attractions lack sufficient antiquity to make them a priority for protection. Nevertheless they have much to offer locals and visitors alike.

‘New’ as they are (Chi Lin dates back no further than 1934), both sites have an air of authenticity. Their mission to “promote the long history of China and to strengthen the people of Hong Kong’s awareness and appreciation of traditional Chinese culture” may be, in part, politically motivated, but ultimately Hong Kong is now part of China and does not, on the whole, feel very Chinese. As gentle reminders go, Chi Lin and Nan Lian are particularly polite ones. And, as a regular visitor to Hong Kong and China with limited time to seek out gardens, I was very glad of the introduction to the Tang Dynasty style, which is what many of us would consider classical Chinese.

Nan Lian Garden is connected to Chi Lin Nunnery by a landscaped bridge, carefully contrived to conceal the highway running beneath. The entire plot is encircled by busy roads, yet clever landscaping ensures that, once inside, one is immersed in a peaceful park which borrows heavily from the vertiginous mountains sheltering Kowloon.

The design of Nan Lian Garden is based on Jiangshouju Garden in Shanxi Province, the only surviving Tang Dynasty garden in China. The essence of the Tang style is the creation of naturally beautiful scenes in miniature using springs, hillocks, clipped trees, flowers, pavilions, winding paths, rocks and bridges, composed in such a way that they create a seemless and ever-changing landscape. This is exactly what I picture in my head when I think about a Chinese garden. The design, which extends over 3.5 hectares, employs the art of borrowing, concealing, blocking and extending views to make the space feel very much more expansive than it is. To appreciate all the nuances of the garden I had to walk around it both clockwise and counterclockwise, in each direction experiencing different vistas and set-pieces.

I chose a busy day to visit, so the garden was thronged with locals and a handful of tourists like myself. Due to the crowds some of the narrower paths were blocked off to protect the plants from trampling, which was a pity for me as I was itching to go beyond the barriers. Unfortunately the midday sun was so bright that the majority of my photographs came out very badly, but, if you close your eyes and imagine a pleasant, enveloping warmth, the sound of chatter dulled by a million leaves, and the hum of dragonflies flitting back and forth, you’ll have some appreciation of the calm sensation I experienced.

There is something unique about visiting a garden alone and without time pressure; it allows one to explore, tarry a while and retrace one’s steps without worrying about anyone else. All in all it’s very liberating. Feeling the most relaxed I have in months, I decided to venture into the tea house, Song Cha Xie, for a one-man tea ceremony. Once I’d been shown how to prepare my tea in the correct manner, I was left in serene silence for an hour and half to enjoy my 6 grams of rare Chinese tea, read my guide-book and contemplate the meaning of life.

I was fascinated to learn that the guiding principles of garden design, which  have been regurgitated by countless proponents of landscape design since and are still taught today, were first written by a Tang Dynasty poet named Lu Zongyuan. He wrote “the design for a garden should suit the people who use it, taking into consideration the environment and for the celebration of the beauty of nature”. And that was over 1,000 years ago.

Another poet of that era, Bai Juyi, wrote “Where there are places for relaxation in the mundane world, there is no need to live as a recluse in the mountains“, which is very much how I feel about urban living. So long as I have green spaces, gardens, trees, peace and quiet, I can forgo country life for all the benefits of living in the city.

Nan Lian Garden is based on nature, but goes beyond it, creating a heightened sense of reality and artistry. It successfully introduces visitors to the traditional Chinese style whilst accommodating visitors with modern facilities such as restaurants, shops, toilets and exhibition spaces. The gardens are open from 7am to 9pm daily and should be on every garden-lover’s Hong Kong itinerary. Click here to visit the garden’s website for further details. TFG.

Plants in Nan Lian Garden

• Japanese black pine (Pinus thunbergii)
• Chinese water pine (Glyptostrobus pensilis)
• Japanese pagoda tree (Styphnolobium japonicum)
• Chinese elm (Ulmus parvifolia)
• Silver- back artopcarpus (Artocarpus hypargyreus)
• Humped fig (Ficus tinctoria)
• Chinese banyan (Ficus microcarpa)
• Common red-stem fig (Ficus variegata)
• Sago palm (Cycas revoluta)
• Horned holly (Ilex cornuta)
• Chinese box (Buxus microphylla var. sinica)
• Chinese ash (Fraxinus chinensis)
• Silk cotton tree (Bombax ceiba)
• Common crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica)
• Orange jasmine (Murraya paniculata)
• Brazilian jasmine (Mandevilla spp.)
• Chinese privet (Ligustrum retusum ‘Merrill’)
• Birdwood’s mucuna (Mucuna birdwoodiana)
• Bougainvillea glabra ‘Variegata’

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I have landed on my feet this year, at least as far as the Chelsea Flower Show goes. I’ve had access to the show on Sunday and on Monday afternoon; a privilege afforded to very few. Unfortunately it’s a little like being upgraded to first class on a flight; it will be awfully difficult to go back to cattle class. I guess one could call Members Day premium economy, and that’s where I’ll be tomorrow morning, bright and early, with lots of photography already in the bag and time to enjoy the show like an average Jo. If you’re there, I’ll be the one sporting a floral shirt and a candy pink jacket: it is Chelsea after all.

So, what have I made of the show over the last two days? There are noticeably fewer gardens although the standard of those that remain is exceptionally high. There is very little silliness, which is one of the benefits of tough economic climate. Those that are in it, are in it to win it. The majority of gardens are of high quality, well conceived and thoughtfully planted: a few are truly outstanding and a couple will linger long in the memory. There are yellow lupins and orange geums everywhere. Water plays an important part in the majority of show gardens and sculpture is employed in brave and exciting ways. It feels like a leaner, crisper Chelsea Flower Show that’s fit for the future.

My personal Best in Show would go to The LG Eco City Garden without hesitation. Quite simply, it makes me smile. In fact more than just smile, it makes me giddily happy. This garden makes me question why other gardens, including my own, don’t make me feel this way. Perhaps it’s the exquisite symmetry, or that I’m having a love affair with yellow at the moment, but I want to live and work, relax and party in this garden. Hay-joung Hwang’s design makes this rectangular plot seem considerably wider than it actually is. It is immersive and calm, stylish and sophisticated, playful and fun. Hay-joung Hwang is charming and sincere as well as talented, and if she does not win Gold I will cry for her.

The M&G Garden is very much better than I expected and considerably more approachable than last year’s garden. The beautiful weather we’ve been enjoying these last two days really makes Sarah Price’s design sing, whilst the rest of us yearn to live somewhere hotter and sunnier. The planting is bright and breezy, if a little too ephemeral for own personal taste. But as a set piece it’s great and deserves praise. The attention to detail is incredible and the more you look at it, the more you see.

I discovered whilst judging today that I have high standards. I was inducted into retail at a time when retail was detail so very little escapes my notice and I don’t have much sympathy for a job poorly done. Added to which, despite my personal exuberance, it takes a lot to blow my socks off. The David Harper and Savills Garden, designed by Nic Howard had that firepower. Had the LG garden not been so far up my street, this would have been my favourite. It’s a phenomenal garden, making extraordinarily good use of the space, and of exceptional quality both in terms of planting and sculpture. If I had all the money in the world, I’d buy ‘that’ sculpture which, by the way, is called ‘Aeon’, and commission Hay-joung Hwang to do the design. This is not a slight on Nic Howard, but me being greedy. Whilst I hope this garden does well, I don’t think it needs my endorsement for a moment.

The Morgan Stanley Garden is very pleasing and professionally executed. However it’s an evolution of theme that’s been explored already by this partnership and, whilst not stale, it’s getting a little predictable. I love the impressive scale of the trees and shrubs that Chris Beardshaw has used and I commend every detail of the planting and hard landscaping, but the design sits awkwardly in this plot and is hard to appreciate from outside of it. This, sadly, makes it an also-ran for me, but the judges may think otherwise.

The Lemon Tree Trust has landed an unforgiving site on the Great Pavilion side of Main Avenue. It always feels like an unfair disadvantage for a garden to have to disguise a backdrop that has all the panache of a UPVC door. Both Hugo Bugg and Paul Martin have managed it but even with an upper level this garden does not. There are elements of brilliance in both the hard and soft landscaping, but I had hoped for more.

I found myself unexpectedly transported by the Trailfinders Garden designed by Jonathan Snow. So much could have gone wrong with this concept, which attempts to recreate a South African wine estate in miniature. Combining three starkly different landscapes into one – formal garden, vineyard and native fynbos – was a big ask. Jonathan has done such a good job that the whole journey from smart homestead to charred wilderness feels utterly natural and believable. Hats off to the designer for utilising every possibility offered by this long site. He’s created an image that any South African could feel proud of.

Building on last year’s Welcome to Yorkshire garden, designer Mark Gregory awakens every sense with his beautiful evocation of God’s Own Country. Listen carefully and over the sound of a babbling beck you’ll hear cattle lowing and birds piping. Breath deeply and you’ll catch the scent of the wood smoke rising from the chimney stack of a tiny stone cottage. Look up and you’ll see larches, look down and there’s a cottage garden at your feet. This is the best Welcome to Yorkshire garden yet and I would not bet against it landing People’s Choice.

On Sunday I was a little disappointed by the VTB Capital – Spirit of Cornwall garden, mainly because I had expected it to fill the whole site rather than half of it. However, once I got close up I could appreciate Stuart Charles Towner’s design more fully. Once again this location is cursed by one of the RHS’ horribly ugly pavilions, but taken out of that context this is a good garden. There felt to me to be a few details missing and an absence of some plants shown in the original sketches. I suspect the harsh winter did away with the planned echiums.

The island site is occupied by the Wuhan Water Garden, China. I was begging to be pleased by this garden, but for a design to be viewed in 360º it’s only pleasing for a maximum of 180º. It’s all about the fountain, which is amusing, but not enough to make it worthy of such as prestigious site.

Last but not least the Wedgwood Garden, designed by Chelsea veteran Jo Thompson, is a class act. Again the design is focussed around water and sculpture, but in a wild and secretive setting. It’s billed as a garden designed for a woman, which seems a strange distinction to make in this day and age, but I feel it has broad and romantic appeal.

Later this week I’ll be covering all the show gardens in much greater detail, so do check back for fuller descriptions, plant lists and more honest opinions from yours truly. TFG.

I have said it before and I will say it again, the LG Eco-City Garden makes me feel happy: the question is, can I explain why? Firstly the colour palette of saturated greens, punctuated by yellows and oranges, topped off with a froth of pure white, makes my heart sing. How rarely we see these colours used in a show garden without the support of purple, but here they are, bright, hopeful and unencumbered. The optimism expressed in this garden appeals to me as someone who’s glass is always half full. It suggests a place where the mornings are cool and breezy, the days are warm and sunny, and evenings full of laughter and friendship. There are no boundaries to living in this perfect indoor/outdoor space. One breezes leisurely from kitchen to garden treading on camomile as one goes. I want to live here: I want to believe that such a situation might exist and that one day I could afford to live this dream. To evoke such feelings is, for me, part of the purpose of a show garden.

I have also said that I would cry for Hay Joung Hwang if she did not win a gold medal, and true to my word there was a tear in my eye when I heard she’d been awarded a second Silver-Gilt. The judges have very strict criteria for marking the show gardens and I’ve no doubt they had good reason to score this garden as they did, but as a layman the outcome is hard to fathom. Anyway, we move on, and I hope that Hay will take huge encouragement from all the positive remarks that are being made about her design. Hay’s practice is small and this garden is a brilliant showcase for her style and talent. If I had need of someone to redesign my garden, I’d have no hesitation in asking Hay to take a look at it.

When viewing the LG Eco-City Garden at ground level it is hard to picture this as a high-rise terrace in a greened residential development. I have included the renderings to help you put the garden in context. For sure, this is not a garden that most of us could to aspire to, especially in a city like London where square footage of this magnitude would come at eye-watering expense. Nevertheless the fantasy is so compelling that one wants to believe it could happen, and would not begrudge the lucky individual that could afford it. Behind the open-plan kitchen area there is a cool, zen-like space to look out on, a living picture composed of hornbeam, slate, moss, ferns and water.  Look closely and you will see tiny goldfish darting back and forth. They are part of the garden’s sustainable narrative in that their waste will be filtered out and used as fertiliser for the plants.

Hay’s design for the LG Eco-City Garden marries two of the 21st Century’s greatest concerns – concern for the environment, and the advance of technology. It integrates the two interests successfully, although not without compromise. This is a residential development and there’s ample use of concrete and glass, neither of which are especially sustainable materials. But their use is a reality, for now at least. From an environmental perspective the plants and trees play a role in oxygen generation, humidity control, temperature moderation, noise and carbon dioxide reduction. The foliage also captures toxic particles in the air before they can enter our lungs and cause us harm. Trees and moss are particularly effective at reducing pollution in urban areas.

This garden could so easily have been left as an architectural composition of trees, hedges, glass and concrete, but flowers have been incorporated liberally and joyfully. They are here to attract pollinators; bees, moths and butterflies which have been so challenged by the changes humans have made to the natural environment. For some people the ideas of outdoor living and attracting insects are not compatible, but we have to get used to it. There are probably fewer airborne creatures in our lives than ever before and we must learn to live side by side.

Naturally, with LG being a manufacturer of high-end technology the garden provides something of a showroom for their wares. It wasn’t only the gentlemen taking a fancy to the vast TV screen embedded in the garden’s perimeter, deftly inset so as to shade the screen from the sun. In the kitchen one finds a refrigerator with a door that becomes clear when tapped, preventing the need to open it to see what’s inside. This reduces the loss of cold air and thereby cuts energy bills. There’s also a washing machine that can wash two loads at once. The garden features a renewable air-to-water heating system known as Therma V which is approved by the government’s renewable heat incentive scheme.

Sleek, beautiful, intelligent and mindful of the environment, Hay Joung Hwang’s design for the LG Eco-City garden ticks many boxes that other show gardens do not. However, Hay did not let any of these sub-plots get in the way of presenting a perfectly joyful, aspirational and professional garden, and for that I award her my personal Best in Show*. TFG.

*As a tribute, and because I did not write-up Hay’s 2016 garden fully on this blog, I am retrospectively posting a gallery of images showing her LG Smart Garden which I hope you’ll enjoy.

Continue scrolling down for a plant list.

Plant List

perennials

• Ammi visnaga ‘Compact White’
• Aquilegia vulgaris ‘Alba’
• Astrantia major ‘Large White’
• Camassia leichtlinii ‘Alba’
• Delphinium ‘Sungleam’
• Digitalis white (these were originally intended to be eremurus)
• Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’
• Geum ‘Banana Daiquiri’
• Hemerocallis lilioasphodelus
• Hesperis matronalis ‘White’
• Lilium perenne ‘Album’
• Lupinus ‘Desert Sun’
• Lupinus ‘Gallery White’
• Melica altissima ‘Alba’
• Orlaya grandiflora
• Ornithogallum nutans
• Papaver ruprifragum ‘Orange Feathers’
• Papaver spicatum
• Phlox divaricata ‘Fuller’s White’
• Ranunculus acris ‘Citrinus’
• Tellima grandiflora
• Trollius ‘Lemon Queen’
• Trollius europaeus
• Trollius ‘Cheddar’
• Verbascum ‘Gainsborough’

Roses

• ‘Diamond Days
• ‘Mary Berry’
• ‘Salvation’
• ‘Yours In Continued Friendship’
• ‘Easy Going’
• ‘High Sheriff’
• ‘Royal Philharmonic’

Moss Bed

• Dryopteris affinis ‘Cristata’
• Athyrium filix-femina
• Leucobryum glaucum (pincushion moss)
• Kindbergia praelonga (common feather moss)
• Hosta sieboldiana ‘Elegans’

‘Steppable’ plants

• Chaemaemelum nobile ‘Treneague’ (Roman camomile)
• Sagina subulata (Pearlwort)
• Mentha requienii (Corsican Mint)

There are only so many hours in the day following a Chelsea Flower Show, and much to my chagrin I did not get around to writing about Hay Joung Hwang’s debut show garden in 2016. There’s no better time to put that right than the day after Hay’s second Chelsea garden won silver-gilt: an admirable result, although I’d have considered it more than worthy of gold.

The 2016 LG Smart Garden was inspired by the concept of intelligent homes, demonstrating that technology can be incorporated harmoniously into the garden as well as the home. The design represented a pared-back, Scandinavian lifestyle within an effervescent garden, planted in what struck me as a very English style. Hay’s garden was pretty and feminine, qualities which are often sidelined at Chelsea, yet so popular in mainstream gardening. The LG Smart Garden stood out from the crowd then, and is just as relevant now. Hay presents her gardens in a way that blends indoors and out, appealing to our desire to extend our living spaces and make the most of precious fine weather.

Whilst looking back at this garden, readers might like to draw comparisons with this year’s LG Eco-City Garden, which occupies a larger site on Main Avenue. The final image is not my own and is taken from Hay’s website. I include it purely to show the garden at twilight, when the show isn’t open to visitors. Hay’s use of lighting is simple yet beautifully effective.

Such is my inability to pick a winner that none of my three favourite show gardens won a gold medal this year. This is why I am not a betting man. My own disappointment is irrelevant, but it must be difficult to reflect objectively on your endeavours when you’ve invested heart and soul in a project as demanding as creating a show garden at Chelsea. Bronze medals are rarely awarded, and when they are the reasons are usually plain to see. However on this occasion I am totally bemused as to why the David Harber and Savills Garden did not do significantly better.

Rather than speculate as to where the garden fell short, I’m going to describe it in as positive terms as I can, and commend it to you as worthy of greater recognition. Occupying one of the large, rectangular sites on Main Avenue, the key contributors to the garden are designer Nic Howard, sculptor and sponsor David Harber, sponsor Savills and contractor Langdale Landscapes. At its simplest level their idea was to make a garden suited to displaying sculpture, no doubt for a client with taste and money. Judged on that basis, the garden succeeds in meeting its brief. One could well imagine this luxurious plot languishing behind a Holland Park townhouse, tended to by gardeners and used by the owners for sophisticated entertainment. There is, of course, a narrative, which involves mankind’s evolving relationship with the environment. The story begins with a natural landscape coming under human control and ends with a sculpture called Aeon, representing a nucleus of energy that keeps our planet in a state of equilibrium. Aeon is viewed through aligned openings within four sculptural screens, creating a metaphorical wormhole through space to the beginning of time.

I admit that much of this sculptural allegory is lost on me: I have a keener eye for what’s beautiful than what’s meaningful. Yet I would say that as a whole I find the garden pleasing, dramatic, even exciting. Whether at 7am in the morning or 8pm at night, the garden looks outstanding, filled with intense colour and dramatic shadows. Without doubt what makes it for me is Aeon, a colossal, amorphous, verdigris-bronze sculpture with a star-burst of 256 gilded aluminium spikes at its heart. At the end of each day, with the sun low in the sky, the gold glows as if lit from within. During the day, the way the draping branches of Betula nigra cast shadows on the sculpture’s outer circumference is also lovely. Aeon is a staggeringly bold and effective piece, deserving of public display.

The first sculptural screen, Enclosure, represents humanity’s attempts to enclose and control the environment by creating rudimentary barriers. Twenty-six bronze panels make up Enclosure, each panel an individual mesh of swirling organic branch and tree shapes. The next two screens, fashioned from richly-textured, oxidized-steel, symbolize the emotional and intellectual development of human culture. Crisp geometric patterns reflect our ability to design for pure aesthetic enjoyment. Finally, a fourth screen, Sophistication, contains a subtle flaw, reminding us of the threat we now pose to our environment.

The last sculpture in the quartet is placed to one side of the vista through which one gazes into the future across a sea of lupins (lupins, lupins everywhere, and not a drop to drink!). Wrought from random strands of bronze, representing human thought and DNA, the Bench of Contemplation is intended as a talking point and conversation facilitator. It can be perched on from either side, with a mirrored water feature behind it.

The planting of the garden does not, arguably, echo the journey taken by the sculptures, which themselves suggest a decline in the abundance and freedom of nature. Instead the planting is introduced in a relatively sparse way at the front of the garden, becoming more lush and verdant as it reaches the back. I studied the planting and the rhythms within it for some time, trying to work out what had rankled with the judges, but I could think of very little. Perhaps an understorey layer – some structural shrubs or evergreens – was what they felt was missing. The front of the plot would certainly be very barren in winter if this were anything but a show garden.

Despite the expert judgement I liked this garden a great deal, and it is my joint runner-up for ‘Best In Show’ alongside the Trailfinders South African Wine Estate Garden. For David Harber, a sculptor of some standing, and corporate sponsor Savills, Nic Howard created a wonderful setting for a bold and uncompromising suite of works. Views into the garden were pleasing from every angle, and the vista that ran front to back will continue to take visitors’ breath away until Saturday.

Having worked together on several award-winning trade stands, I hope that David and Nic will not be deterred from trying again at Chelsea. Sculpture as a form of garden ornament is clearly on the rise in terms of popularity and this daring composition brought something different and welcome to the fore. Bravo for trying and better luck next time chaps. Fortune favours the brave. TFG.

Continue scrolling down for a comprehensive plant list.

Plant List

• Acataea simplex ‘White Pearl’
• Alchemilla sericata ‘Goldstrike’
• Allium christophii
• Allium ‘Purple Sensation’
• Anchusa ‘Loddon Royalist’
• Anthriscus ‘Raven’s Wing’
• Aquilegia ‘Blue Barlow’
• Aquilegia ‘Nora Barlow’
• Artemesia ‘Silver Queen’
• Aruncus ‘Misty Lace’
• Asplenium scolopendrium
• Aster divaricatus ‘Beth Chatto’
• Astrantia ‘Claret’
• Betula nigra
• Briza media
• Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’
• Cenolophium denudatum
• Centaurea montana ‘Black Sprite’
• Cirsium rivulare ‘Atropurpureum’
• Dianthus cruentus
• Digitalis ‘Suttons Apricot’
• Dryopteris affinis
• Epimedium x rubrum
• Euonymus europaeus
• Euphorbia cyparissias
• Euphorbia lathyris
• Geranium ‘Gravetye’
• Geranium macrorrhizum ‘Spessart’
• Geum ‘Mai Tai’
• Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’
• Hackonechloa macra
• Heucherella ‘Kimono’
• Hosta ‘Sum and Substance’
• Knautia macedonica
• Lupinus ‘West Country Persian Slipper’
• Lychnis ‘White Robin’
• Nectaroscordum siculum
• Nepeta ‘Junior Walker
• Nepeta ‘Summer magic’
• Nepeta ‘Walker’s Low’
• Paeonia lactiflora ‘Buckeye Belle’
• Paeonia lactiflora ‘Inspector Lavergne’
• Paeonia lactiflora ‘Kansas’
• Physocarpus ‘Amber Jubilee’
• Primula ‘Miller’s Crimson’
• Rheum palmatum ‘Antrosanguineum’
• Salvia ‘Caradonna’
• Salvia ‘Wendy’s Wish’
• Sesleria caerulea
• Sesleria nitida
• Stachys byzantina ‘Big Ears’
• Stipa gigantea
• Stipa tenuissima
• Symphytum ‘Langthorn Pink’
• Syringa microphylla ‘Superba’
• Tellima grandiflora
• Thalictrum ‘Nimbus Pink’
• Trifolium repens ‘Atropurpureum’
• Viola odorata ‘Coeur d’Alsace’

Three cheers for Kazuyuki Ishihara: another Chelsea gold medal to his name and ‘Best in Show’ for his Artisan Garden entitled O-mo-te-na-shi no NIWA. Although the charismatic Japanese landscape artist is now as much a part of the Chelsea Flower Show as Pimms, the Queen or improbably large delphiniums, we know relatively little about him. Mr Ishihara speaks limited English and comes across as shy, except when learns of the judge’s final decision. Such is his passion for his craft, and for Chelsea, that he goes wild with excitement, and quite right to. He has a track record that very few designers can match. He has now been awarded a gold medal for seven years consecutively and best Artisan Garden on five of those occasions. Mr Ishihara was the first Japanese designer ever to win the President’s Award at Chelsea, back in 2016 for his Senri-Sentei – Garage Garden. I did a very poor job of photographing that garden so didn’t feature it at the time, but have included an image at the end of this post so that you may compare this more contemporary design with this year’s traditional garden. With the assistance of Google I have taken the opportunity to include a Japanese translation of these words. Apologies for any errors, but I hope you get the gist!

石原一之の3つの喝采：彼の名を冠したチェルシーの金メダルとアルティザン・ガーデンの「ベスト・イン・ショー」、O-mo-te-na-shi no NIWA。カリスマ的な日本の芸術家は、今やチェルシー・フラワー・ショーの一部として、ピムス、クイーンズ、おそらくは大型のデルフィニウムのようなものですが、彼についてはほとんど知りません。石原氏は、限られた英語を話し、裁判官の最終判決を知る以外は、恥ずかしがりのように見える。そのような彼の工芸品への彼の情熱、そしてチェルシーのために、彼は興奮して野生になり、かなり正しい。彼は、ほとんどのデザイナーが一致することができる実績を持っています。彼は現在7年間連続して金メダルを獲得しており、そのうち5つで最高のArtisan Gardenが授与されています。石原氏はチェルシーで大統領賞を受賞した最初の日本人デザイナーで、2016年にはセンリ・センテイ・ガレージ・ガーデンのために誕生しました。私はその庭を撮影するのは非常に貧弱な仕事をしていましたが、当時の特徴はありませんでしたが、今年の伝統的な庭とこのより現代的なデザインを比較できるようにこのポストの終わりにいくつかの画像が含まれています。 Googleの助けを借りて、これらの言葉の日本語翻訳を含める機会を得ました。何か間違いをお詫びしますが、要点を得ることを願っています！

It has been said by myself and others that Kazuyuki Ishihara is a one trick pony. Looking back to 2004 when he first staged a Chelsea garden, one learns that this is far from the truth. His style has evolved considerably over the last 14 years, making me even more excited to see what he chooses to do next. Even if he chose not move on, what a thrill it always is to see this style of garden made so impeccably. I could gaze at his show gardens all day long and never tire of them. I was delighted that he took a moment to have his photograph taken with me, something I rarely ask anyone I don’t know to do. To find out more about the man, have a look at the short film below. Persevere with it, as his story is a good one.

石原一之はトリックポニーの一人だと言われています。 2004年にChelseaの庭を初めて上演したとき、彼はこれが真実から遠いことを学びました。 彼のスタイルは過去14年間でかなり進化しており、私は彼が次に何をするかを見てさらに興奮しています。 彼が移動しないことを選択したとしても、いつもこのスタイルの庭園を見ることが、どんなにスリルであっても、まったく完璧になりました。 私は一日中、彼のショーガーデンを注視することができ、決して疲れない。 私は自分の写真を私と一緒に撮ってもらうために瞬間を取ったことを嬉しく思っています。 その男についてもっと知るには、下のショートフィルムを見てください。 彼の物語は良いものなので、それを忍耐してください。

To Western eyes at least, this year’s garden, inspired by the treasured Japanese culture of omotenashi, appears to be the embodiment of Japanese garden design. It has water, rocks, acers, irises, moss, bonsai, lanterns and an octagonal pavilion, all the ingredients we expect to see in such a garden. Omotenashi, is the concept of wholehearted and sincere hospitality, and the wish to invoke this feeling in guests to the garden. The planting is based on Ikenobo, a style of Japanese flower arranging dating from the 15th century.  This is where Mr Ishihara began, studying this, the purest form of Ikebana, from the age of 22. The placement of plants and distribution of colour in this garden are carefully considered in relation to the space.

西洋の目には少なくとも、オオテナシの貴重な日本の文化に触発された今年の庭は、日本の庭のデザインの一形態と思われる。 それは、水、岩、エイサー、虹彩、苔、盆栽、灯篭、八角形のパビリオンを持っています。 心のこもったホスピタリティのコンセプトであり、お客様の庭にこの気持ちを呼び起こしたいという思いがあります。 植栽は、15世紀の日本の花の様式である池坊をベースにしています。 これは、石原氏が始まった場所で、22歳から純粋な形の生け花を研究しています。この庭の植物の配置と色の分布は、空間との関係で慎重に検討されます。

Mr Ishihara’s latest composition is enhanced by a fabulous, shaded location in a woodland glade between Eastern Avenue and the other Artisan Gardens. The backdrop of birch, beech and Atlantic blue cedar is perfect, creating a seamless transition between temporary garden and permanent surroundings. It is almost impossible to find fault with his gardens, which are executed and maintained throughout the show to such a high standard. Dust and debris are removed from the water and pincushion moss daily, by hand.

石原氏の最新作は、イースタン・アベニューと他のアルティザン・ガーデンの間の森林の隙間にあるすばらしい、影のある場所によって強化されています。 バーチ、ブナ、大西洋の青白い杉の背景は、一時的な庭園と恒久的な環境の間でシームレスな移行を作り、完璧です。 彼の庭園で不具合を見つけることはほとんど不可能であり、その庭園はショーの間に実行され維持されています。 毎日水とピンカスの苔からほこりや土石を手で取り除きます。

The focal point in this year’s garden is an octagonal Azumaya, or garden house, with a gently sloping roof fashioned from copper. A central pool of grey stone, studded by irises, is fed by three crystal-clear cascades. The pool is surrounded by Japanese maples interspersed with pines, viburnums and a handsome enkianthus. The natural sound of water falling onto rock is intended to encourage the forgetting of time and the feeling of eternity. Every detail of the garden is considered, including the front boundary of pincushion moss, Pachysandra terminalis and Houttuynia cordata ‘Chameleon’. Flanking the entrance to the Azumaya, the two twisted larches are actually bonsai that have been trained with wires to look especially ancient. Like everything else in the garden, they are quite marvellous.

今年の庭園の焦点は、八角形のAzumaya（ガーデンハウス）で、銅製のやさしい屋根があります。 虹彩に囲まれた灰色の石の中央プールは、3つのクリスタルクリアカスケードによって供給されます。 プールには、松、芝生、ハンサムなエンカンサスが散在している日本の庭園に囲まれています。 岩の上に落ちる自然な音は、時間と永遠の感覚を忘れることを奨励することを意図しています。 ピンカス苔、Pachysandra terminalisおよびHouttuynia cordata ‘Chameleon’の前境界を含めて、庭のすべての詳細が考慮されます。 Azumayaへの入り口に面した2本の撚り糸は実際には昔から見えるワイヤーで訓練された盆栽です。 庭の他のすべてと同様に、彼らは非常に素晴らしいです。

Mr Ishihara calls himself a landscape artist because that is what he is. He creates a picture of natural perfection by deftly balancing all the elements. We suggest that he does the same thing every year because we can’t find fault elsewhere, and because our memories are short. That is our failing and not his. We are extremely fortunate to have him come to Chelsea every year to remind us of the beauty, precision and meaning of Japanese gardens. And what would Chelsea be without his priceless reactions to good news? Definitely not the same. TFG.

石原氏は、それが彼のものなので、庭師と呼んでいます。 彼はすべての要素を巧みにバランスさせることによって、自然の完璧な姿を描きます。 私たちは毎年同じことをすることをお勧めします。なぜなら、私たちはどこかで不具合を見つけることができず、私たちの記憶が不足しているからです。 それは私たちの失敗であり、彼の失敗ではありません。 日本の庭園の美しさ、精密さ、そして意味を思い起こさせるため、彼は毎年チェルシーに来られることは非常に幸運です。 そして、チェルシーは、良い知らせをすることなく、何ができるでしょうか？ 確かに同じではありません。 TFG。

Same sponsor, different continent …. after a five-year hiatus Trailfinders are back and this time they’ve transported us to South Africa. For eight consecutive years Trailfinders brought us Australian themed gardens, bidding a temporary farewell in 2013 with an epic garden designed by the brilliant Phillip Johnson, one of my garden design heroes. That garden won a gold medal and the coveted Best in Show award. In the intervening years Trailfinders and their partners Fleming’s Nurseries were missed, not only for their gardens but their antipodean informality and sense of humour. The partnership always brought something fresh to Chelsea, occasionally getting up the noses of established British designers, which is never a bad thing.

Having taken a break, Trailfinders have backed both a new continent and new designer, Jonathan Snow. His design presents us with a careful and beautifully articulated study of a South African wine estate. So much can go wrong with this style of show garden. There’s the risk of cramming far too much in, or ending up with a garden that looks like it belongs at Legoland. Buildings, in particular, are tricky as they generally have to be scaled down and occupy a lot of space. Trying to recreate any foreign landscape on British soil is a challenge, let alone three different ones. Whilst I wanted this garden to be great, I had my doubts. It turns out that I should have had more faith.

Everything about the delivery of this garden is quite brilliant. The proportions are superb, allowing the facade of the Cape Dutch homestead to look perfectly at home in its setting. A white verandah, paved with terracotta tiles, is swathed in pale pink roses, R. ‘Paul’s Himalayan Musk’ to be precise. Of course there had to be agapanthus, one of the signature flowers of South Africa, but then comes a small, formal garden edged with box and billowing with cottage garden plants. Mixed in are cultivated forms of Fynbos* plants such as Aristea major, Dierama pulcherrimum, Tulbaghia violacea and Libertia grandiflora. Such gardens are typical of South African wine estates, providing a soothing contrast to the harsh Fynbos landscapes beyond.

A gate in a whitewashed wall leads into a small vineyard. If anything, this section might have been made slightly larger as it quickly gives way to Fynbos. In common with wine growing areas the world over, roses are planted at the end of each row of vines. This allows early detection of diseases which might harm the vines, since roses tend to succumb to problems first. In between the vines, wild flowers have been sown to attract insects. These would ultimately be ploughed back into the soil as a green manure. This kind of sustainability is essential in a finely balanced habitat which is already threatened by alien species and over-fertilisation. Most fynbos plants are adapted to nutrient-poor soils and are particularly susceptible to the presence of a high level of phosphates, which leads to chlorosis (yellowing) and then necrosis (blackening).

As we enter the show garden’s Fynbos the plot has been banked up sharply to the right, representing an area that would be considered too steep to be cultivated. Here we find a rich mix of plants, representing the world’s smallest but most botanically diverse floristic kingdom. There are leucadendrons, proteas, kniphofias, serrurias and leucospermums, a whole gamut of plants we recognised from florists and exhibits in the Great Pavilion. Most are not hardy here apart from in the mildest parts of the UK, and not entirely happy outside except in Western Cornwall and the Scilly Isles. Plants for the garden were sourced from Cornwall, Tuscany and Southern Spain. 10,000 seeds purchased from Kirstenbosch were germinated and grown on into plants of show garden standard by experts at Kellways, a prominent name in British Horticulture since 1851.

Some visitors to Chelsea may be puzzled by the charred remains of shrubs at the front left-hand corner of the garden. These represent fire, which is an essential part of the Fynbos life-cycle. Fire clears old growth, returns precious nutrients to the soil, and enables certain seeds to germinate, through the effects of heat and smoke. The ground here is peppered with flowering bulbs such as ixia and ornithogalum, taking advantage of the space and light to do their thing before larger shrubs regenerate from the base or from seed. It’s a cycle that has similarities to heathland here in the UK, or to coppice woodland, only without the element of fire. Where there’s an opportunity to grow, there’s always a plant to take it.

I know that I am not alone in enjoying this garden. It brings to a Chelsea the relatable and the exotic, formality and wild nature. It’s an exciting a heady mix, presented by a deft hand. Jonathan Snow’s design makes the plot appear considerably larger than it is, and views from the front of the plot to the homestead at the back are carefully contrived. No criticisms readily come to mind, so I shall not search for them – I even liked the simple post-and-wire fencing that surrounded the plot, which I thought was charmingly understated.

Trailfinders, Jonathan Snow and contractor Mark Richardson of Stewart Landscape Construction should be well pleased with their silver-gilt medal. What prevented the judges from awarding gold is anyone’s guess, but for what it’s worth I was charmed by the whole composition. Well done chaps – please don’t leave it another five years before you come back and transport us to sunnier climes again. TFG.

Continue scrolling down for an extensive plant list and more photographs.

*Fynbos is a small belt of natural shrubland or heathland vegetation located in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa.

Plant List

In the Homestead Garden

• Agapanthus praecox
• Allium ‘Gladiator’
• Allium ‘Mount Everest’
• Ammi visnaga ‘Green Mist’
• Anethum graveolens
• Aristea major
• Artimesia absinthium ‘Lambrook Silver’
• Astrantia major ‘Buckland’
• Diascia personata
• Dierama pulcherrimum
• Dietes grandiflora
• Eugenia myrtifolia ‘New Port’
• Gaura lindheimeri ‘The Bride’
• Geranium pratense ‘Mrs Kendall Clark’
• Gladiolus colvillei ‘The Bride’
• Gladiolus communis subsp. byzantinus
• Knautia macedonica ‘Melton Pastels’
• Kniphofia ‘Primrose Upward’
• Libertia grandiflora
• Myrsine africana
• Ornithogalum thyrsoides
• Pelargonium capitatum
• Pelargonium odoratissiumum
• Pelargonium peltatum
• Pelargonium tomentosum
• Plumbago auriculata
• Rosa ‘Paul’s Himalayan Musk’
• Rosa ‘St Ethelburga’
• Salvia x sylvestris ‘Dear Anja’
• Sisyrinchium striatum
• Scabiosa drakensbergensis
• Tulbaghia violacea
• Varbascum chaixii ‘Album’
• Verbena hastata ‘Pink Spires’

In the Vineyard

• Vitis vinifera
• Rosa alba ‘Celeste’
• Lupinus angustifolius
• Vicia sativa
• Trifolium incarnatum
• Sinapis arvensis

In the Fynbos

• Agapanthus africans ‘Navy Blue’
• Aristea major
• Ballota africana
• Berzelia albiflora
• Berzelia lanyginosa
• Bulbine frutescens
• Coleonema pulchellum
• Diosma ericoides ‘Pink Fountain’
• Elegia capensis
• Elegia tectorum
• Erica canaliculata
• Erica oatesii ‘Winter Fire’
• Freesia laxa
• Hymenolepsis parviflora
• Ixia ‘Hogarth’
• Ixia polystacha
• Ixia ‘Venus’
• Kniphofia uvaria
• Kniphofia northiae
• Leonotis ocymifolia var. cymifolia
• Leucadendron ‘Safari Sunset’
• Leucandendron ‘Sixteen Candles’
• Leucospermum cordifolium
• Leucospermum ‘Soleil’
• Leucospermum ‘Yellow Carnival’
• Mimetes cucullatus
• Ornithogalum dubium
• Ornithogalum thryrsoides
• Pelargonium cordifolium rubrotinctum
• Pelargonium exstipulatum
• Pelargonium fragrans
• Pelargonium sidoides
• Pelargonium strigifolium
• Pelargonium triste
• Polygala myrtifolia
• Protea eximia
• Protea cynaroides ‘Madiba’
• Protea scolymocephala
• Rhodocoma capensis
• Salvia africana lutea ‘Kirstenbosch’
• Scabiosa incisa ‘Kudo Blue’
• Scabiosa incisa ‘Kudo White’
• Serruria aemula ‘Galaxy’
• Serruria aemula ‘Lemon Honey’
• Serruria phylicoides
• Thamnochortus insignis

I love a G&T, so much so that I have an entire garden named after my favourite drink. Naturally I was very happy to discover another garden inspired by the juniper-infused spirit at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show.

The Silent Pool Gin Garden was part of a line up in the new Space to Grow category. If I’m honest I didn’t really grasp the distinction, except that each of the gardens had a smallish scale and a contemporary twist. Space to Grow included gardens highlighting the threat to our underwater ecosystems, the experience of young people with HIV, skin care and awareness of Myeloma, alongside gardens promoting gin and a non-alcoholic ‘spirit’ called Seedlip, featuring plants exclusively from the pea family. Let’s just say it was a broad church. The best thing about Space to Grow was that the RHS had pushed these gardens back against the show’s inner perimeter, providing them with the backdrop of Christopher Wren’s magnificent Royal Hospital, a nugget of borrowed landscape that money could not buy. There’s no comparison with the Great Pavilion on the other side of Royal Hospital Way, a functional building with about as much charm as a Zanussi washing machine.

Designed by David Neale, the Silent Pool Gin Garden effectively addressed two briefs – to create a relaxing, urban haven in which a professional couple might unwind, and to incorporate references to distilling and the Silent Pool brand in particular. This ‘professional urban couple’ is particularly well served by garden designers at RHS shows, although I have yet to meet anyone resembling them: these lucky people have a lot more money than any professionals I know. Nevertheless this was a garden that professional people, twinned or otherwise, might aspire to, provided they could afford a skilled gardener to maintain it whilst they go about their busy lives.

Where the designer’s skill lay was in interpreting the sponsor’s exquisitely  romanticised brand. Back in 2014, Silent Pool gin was in the vanguard of a new wave of British gins, which has lately built into something of a tsunami. Silent Pool is distilled and bottled in Surrey, using water drawn from an ancient spring that rises from a natural chalk aquifer. The gin’s name is taken from the ancient freshwater pool which the spring feeds. The pool, considered by some to be sacred, is noted for an eerie and unexplained calmness. The water exhibits n intense, blue opalescence, caused by the chalk content. The bottle mirrors exactly the colour of the pool’s water at its deepest point: it’s a pale, translucent, teal-blue vessel, adorned with a filigree pattern depicting the 24 botanicals that form the gin’s unique recipe. The silhouettes of rose, iris (orris root), lavender, camomile, angelica and nineteen other botanicals are picked out in copper, echoing the bespoke stills in which distillation takes place. Look closely and you will find illustrations of the evil Prince John and Emma, a woodcutter’s daughter, whom the prince is said to have drowned in the pool. How we adore a product with a good story attached to it!

So here we have the garden’s essential ingredients – still water, overhanging trees, decorative botanicals, filigree panels, cool blues and coppery oranges. (Alas no trembling maidens or wicked knights, but perhaps they are being held in reserve for next year’s show?) These are attractive elements to work with, at once restful and also sufficiently diverse to create tension and interest. David Neale chose UK-sourced Purbeck walling, warm Portland stone, rugged Corten steel and weathered English oak as his hard landscaping materials, using them to create a series of walls, raised beds, pathways and planters framing a sequence of pools and planted areas.

A restricted palette, with only multi-stemmed hornbeam used as structural planting, made for a calm and clean garden. Drama was delivered in the form of a twisted ‘citrus peel’ sculpture, formed of hammered copper, and a gorgeous planting scheme. Here we got to enjoy Chelsea stalwarts Anchusa azurea ‘Dropmore’ and Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’ combined with Dryopteris erythrosora ‘Brilliance’, Corydalis flexuosa ‘China Blue’, Aquilegia ‘Henson Harebell’ and Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’. Somewhere in the undergrowth were the blue poppy, meconopsis, with flowers of the most perfect Silent Pool blue.

In the water grew Iris fulva, the Amercian copper iris. Presented in perfect condition, David explained that the flowers had been encouraged into bloom in a child’s paddling pool in his parents’ conservatory. Chelsea designers will go to any lengths to achieve perfection and this garden came so close, landing a fashionable silver-gilt medal and, perhaps more importantly, the People’s Choice award in the Space to Grow category.

There was nothing challenging, quirky or especially original about this garden – we have seen the like before – but thank goodness it was in the Chelsea mix. Most of the gardens at this year’s show were great to look at, but not to live with. My earlier gentle sarcasm aside, this garden would have satisfied the aspirations of professional clients dreaming of a garden in which to unwind on a summer’s evening. Here they might readily enjoy a gin and tonic, gaze into the water and quietly slip into a fantasy world where princes really do drown maidens in silent pools. TFG.

Liz Patterson, Show Manager for the RHS Chatsworth Flower Show, will have been glued to the weather forecast for the last fourteen days. Last year’s inaugural show, in the magnificent park surrounding the home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, was hampered by spiteful weather and lengthy traffic delays. Press Day was a total wash out, with everyone evacuated from the show ground in the early afternoon for fear that some of the structures might blow down and cause injury. The shoes I wore that day went straight in the bin. All seemed lost, but the sun returned for Members’ Day and the show went on to welcome thousands of visitors. Not much gets between the English and a good flower show! Liz can sleep soundly tonight, at least as far as the weather is concerned: light winds and only a 2% chance of rain we can cope with. As for the parking situation, we shall see!

Scanning over the site plan, visitors can expect a new and improved layout, with the show gardens grouped together and an extensive plant village offering some amazing opportunities to purchase. An inflatable replica of the famous Great Conservatory (aka The Great Stove) returns, as do the enormous Devonshire and Cavendish Marquees. These will host over a hundred exhibits from nurserymen, growers and plant collectors from across the land. Lessons have been learned and I am looking forward to a great day assessing trade stands for the RHS again tomorrow.

I am slightly apprehensive about the number of show gardens this year, substantially down on last year and sited very much on the fringe of the show. This is not a surprise, given the event is kicking off only ten days after Chelsea ended. There is only so much sponsorship available, but gardens are one of the main draws for a flower show of this calibre and I’d like to have seen a few more in the programme.

Top billing goes to a colossal installation of phalaenopsis orchids being staged in the Great Conservatory. Over 5,000 plants of 100 varieties will be used to adorn chandeliers, decorate a waterfall and form a living wall. Floral Designer Jonathan Moseley is the man with a plan to transform this space into a phalaenopsis fantastia.

The Chatsworth estate is vast and impressive, lending itself to bold and ambitious projects. A massed planting of 12,000 Cosmos bipinnatus ‘Razzamatazz’ will be planted in a river formation beneath the facade of Chatsworth House. If you’ve ever wanted to capture yourself having a Timotei moment, this could be the place to do it.

A scarcity of show gardens will be partially counterbalanced by a new competition which invites designers to create ‘iconic’ borders with the theme of movement. The initial Long Border competition was open to students, garden designers, community groups and talented individuals. The top eight borders have been realised in full at Chatsworth and will be presented to the public this week. I think this is a great idea, providing visitors with ideas that should be incredibly easy to replicate or adapt at home. I also like that the RHS have invited entries into an affordable category from a diverse variety of entrants, including complete newcomers. Below is a long border entitled ‘Summer Breeze’ by designer Kristian Reay, which heralds the approach of a long, hot summer. Here’s hoping.

Finally, a new Living Laboratory will explore the vital role plants play in an urban environment. Plants and technology will be displayed to highlight how different varieties can help address a number of challenges we have in our towns and cities, including pollution, flooding and lack of plants for pollinators.

The Chatsworth Flower Show, in partnership with Wedgwood, runs from Wednesday June 6th to Sunday June 10th 2018 and tickets are still available. Keep an eye on my Facebook Page, Instagram and You Tube Channel for updates.

Top and bottom of post – Sam Ovens’ Wedgwood Garden at Chatsworth in 2017.

Tuesday in Derbyshire dawned grey and dank. I had only packed my Man from Del Monte outfit, so arrived at Chatsworth looking a trifle too tropical for the tepid conditions. I was not about to carry a Fedora around all day, so on my head it stayed. Perhaps I’m imagining it, but I am sure people are more deferential when they meet a man in a smart hat – I must wear one more often. Whether that’s true or not, it kept the drizzle off my glasses whilst I crouched uncomfortably on the metal walkway to take photographs of the show gardens. Totally untropical and not a pineapple in sight.

As expected, the number of gardens at RHS Chatsworth had dwindled significantly compared to last year: in fact there were only five. My suspicion is that sponsors were wooed and cajoled into staging gardens at the inaugural show, but decided not to return a second time, either for reasons of cost or disappointment with the return on their investment. Wedgwood, official partners of the RHS at Chatsworth, went from producing a full-on show garden to a section of limestone wall bisected by a gigantic sliver of glass. This was, apparently, inspired by Joseph Paxton’s Great Conservatory, though quite how is anyone’s guess.

I’ll say it because I’m in a provocative mood, but the introduction of a category dubbed ‘Installations’ smacked of filling the void left by ‘proper’ gardens with something cheaper and less engaging. The problem is that I’m not sure installations are what visitors come to RHS shows to see. I certainly don’t. With the exception of Brewin Dolphin’s homage to a village that stood in the shadow of Chatsworth House before Capability Brown swept it away (pictured above), the installations were at best amusing and at worse dull. Crowds did not gather round them, only cursory photos and selfies were taken. I found the Long Border competition slightly more titillating, but the siting of these was not brilliant and the quality sadly lacking in some instances. As for the ‘river’ of cosmos, something had gone awry there.

Moan over, otherwise I’ll never be allowed back.

On a brighter note the show gardens that were presented at Chatsworth were good, with a couple heading towards greatness. The close adjacency to Chelsea in the calendar means that few designers are able to create gardens at both shows, with the notable exception of Paul Hervey-Brooke’s who delivered at both and was still smiling at the end of it. His garden for Brewin Dolphin was categorised as an installation and was therefore ineligible for a medal, despite looking for all the world like a garden. Confused? So was I.

Anyway, of the five show gardens I felt four were worthy of comment and here they are, fully illustrated and in no particular order:

CCLA: A Family Garden, designed by Amanda Waring and Laura Arison (Silver-Gilt Medal)

This garden had three distinct sections – a dining area beneath a modern, grey pavilion; a child’s play area comprising a flowery meadow surrounding an onion-shaped willow ‘den’; and an informal seating area with luxuriant planting around a bench and water feature. I felt the three spaces could have linked better visually, but overall the garden was very nicely done. The downside for me, as it was for other Chatsworth gardens, is that the backdrop consisted of a row of garden sheds and a couple of ghostly white marquees. Why the RHS don’t think this through I do not know. I hope the designers challenge them to position the plots more sympathetically in future. Had the copper beech hedge at the back of this garden been continuous and higher, at least the ugly sheds might have been blocked out. Apart from that I felt the garden fulfilled its brief to create an attractive, safe space for a family of diverse ages. It looked its best in the early evening with the sun filtering through pale ox-eye daisies and illuminating the inviting seating areas.

Hay Time in the Dales, designed by Chris Myers (Silver Medal)

After the success of Mark Gregory’s Welcome to Yorkshire Garden at Chelsea, I felt sure that Hay Time in the Dales would follow suit with a gold medal. Although staged on a smaller plot, the romance and atmosphere captured by this garden was magical given it had only been in situ for a matter of days. On a cool, drizzly morning in early June it took no imagination at all to place this scene in the Yorkshire Dales. I loved all the little details such as the woolly socks on a rotary washing line and a sign on the gate reading ‘Winter food for stock. Please keep in single file’. Plants emerged from and enveloped a tiny converted barn, its roof and walls encrusted with ferns, mosses and grasses. I wonder if the judges found the meadow area too loose and unstructured? I really could find no fault with Hay Time in the Dales, despite this not being remotely my personal style of gardening. Chris – you got my Best in Show if that’s any consolation at all. The Man from Del Monte – he say yes!

The Great Outdoors designed by Phil Hirst (Gold Medal and Best in Show)

This was a solid show garden and deserved a gold medal. For me it felt ever so slightly dated, perhaps because of the colour scheme used, or the purple floor cushions which I could have done without. Something about the arrangement of green, purple, magenta, yellow and orange in geometric blocks reminded me of an 80’s shell suit. Once imagined, this is a hard image to shake! However some of the planting was divine, especially towards the back of the plot where luminous Anemone ‘White Swan’ romped about with hostas, ferns and black-leaved elder in the shade of a young oak tree. There was heaps of interest in structures, seating and surfaces, including a section paved with handsome wooden blocks laid end-on. One for that infamous professional couple we last met at Chelsea I don’t doubt, but a little too jumpy and jagged for my taste.

The John Deere Garden, Designed by Elspeth Stockwell and Jo Fairfax (Silver Gilt Medal)

Who would have thought a garden celebrating 100 years of tractors could be attractive to anyone other than a 6-year-old boy or a farmer? Well, designers Elspeth Stockwell and Jo Fairfax succeeded and landed a silver gilt medal for their efforts. This garden was all about the agricultural, featuring a convoy of miniature golden tractors floating above a sea of Calamagrostis ‘Karl Foerster’ and Luzula nivea (snow-white wood-rush). The garden was surrounded by a bold sweep of charred oak posts which did a sterling job of hiding everything behind. The blackened wood set off a fine selection of flowers, including one of my favourite spring beauties, Chaerophyllum hirsutum ‘Roseum’, an umbel that resembles a pinky-lilac cow parsley. This garden was all about strong vertical lines, reinforced by plants such as foxgloves, lysimachia, persicaria and camassia. Blousy thalictrums and floaty aquilegias stopped the composition from appearing too upright and spiky. A pleasing design that struck me as better suited to a public space than a private one.

By lunchtime the clouds had started to disperse. By 4.30pm, when my judging duties were over, the sky was clear-blue crisscrossed by fuzzy white vapour trails. All of a sudden my hat started to make me feel hot and I wanted to take it off. A fellow judge and I snuck up to Chatsworth’s walled gardens to seek out Becky Crowley, cut-flower grower extraordinaire, for a chat. I can heartily recommend her Instagram feed if you are easily excited by beautiful flower photography. I found it hard to imagine that there could be a more beautiful place to work than here, looking out over rows of iris and peony to the Brownian landscape beyond.

At 6.30pm, as the show ground closed down for the day, a golden light flooded across the River Derwent causing Chatsworth’s gilded windows to gleam with all the richness and magnificence they were intended to convey. The Man from Del Monte, having spotted only one, very small pineapple all day, returned home to Kent satisfied but empty-handed. TFG.

What a rollercoaster ride last week was. It began with visits to two very fine private gardens, open by appointment for the National Garden Scheme, and ended with a frantic day of potting up and bedding out in my own garden at The Watch House. In between came the RHS Chatsworth Flower Show in Derbyshire and a whirlwind tour of Coton Manor Gardens in Northamptonshire. The days had all become a blur by Sunday. Writing this post, it’s been a pleasure reflecting on what was a happy, varied and sunny week: the sort I’d like to enjoy many more of. England is magical in May and early June, which is why I like to take most of my holidays then. I return to work today looking forward to a well-earned rest. How lucky we are to live in a country so blessed with beautiful countryside and great gardens. I sometimes have to remind myself of that.

All the locations I visited last week will be getting their own posts in due course (perhaps not Newport Pagnell Motorway Services), but in the meantime, here’s a taste of my adventures.

First stop was The Orchard, home to Mark Lane who you may recognise from the BBC’s Gardeners’ World. When not on our screens, Mark is a busy and successful garden designer and writer. He made his name in publishing before an accident and subsequent diagnosis with spina bifida meant that he required a wheelchair to get about. Mark re-trained and has never looked back. As one might expect, The Orchard is skilfully adapted for wheelchair access, but the design is not compromised by this. Mark’s aesthetic is contemporary, softened by varied, multi-layered planting. There’s a strong emphasis on structure, interesting perennials and plants which attract wildlife into the garden. The Orchard is open by appointment to small groups of four or less, between July 1st and August 31st 2018. Individuals are also very welcome. Mark and his partner Jasen are charming, enthusiastic hosts, making my visit a thoroughly enjoyable one. Click here for details about how to arrange a visit to The Orchard.

On the same day I visited Marshborough Farmhouse near Sandwich (pictured above). Rarely does one come across a private garden of this calibre in terms of plantsmanship and standards of gardening. Quite simply it blew my socks off. I left wanting to return again and again, bowled over by the owners’ knowledge and commitment to their garden, which is all consuming. From 2.5 acres of Kentish farmland Sarah and David Ash have gently fashioned a garden of great character. Their collection of plants, many of which have been raised from seed or cuttings, is stupendous and will delight anyone with a passion for plants. Unlike my garden, which is on chalk, the soil here is slightly acidic, sandy loam and very sharply drained. This makes it possible to grow all sorts of Australian and New Zealand natives, as well as Mediterranean plants. I don’t mind admitting that I was completely in awe of this garden and returned home feeling that I must try harder. Visits for groups of ten or more can be arranged between the 18th and 29th of June 2018, and again between the 20th and 31st of August. I would heartily recommend taking a notebook and pencil as I guarantee you will encounter plants you’ve never seen before. Click here for details about how to visit Marshborough Farmhouse.

Whilst at Chatsworth I managed to sneak up to the walled gardens, located on a gentle slope high above the big house and with a magical view of Capability Brown’s expansive landscape park. The hanging woods behind march right up to the mellow stone walls, lilac rhododendrons spilling bountifully over. This is the sort of place I imagine gardeners might go if they qualified for heaven. Gardener and guardian angel Becky Crowley presides cheerfully over a cutting garden packed with peonies, hesperis, irises, geums and roses, alongside generous plots of fruit and vegetables. Much longer required here on my next visit.

When I’m travelling cross-country I try not to waste an opportunity to stop off at a garden en route, especially when I have a car that I can pack with plants. The night before my journey I Googled “Gardens near the M1” and up popped Coton Manor Gardens. I’ve been researching and visiting gardens for over 25 years, yet somehow I’d never heard of this one: remiss of me, yet what a fabulous find. The garden at Coton Manor possesses the kind of quality, charm and personality that is lacking in some better-known gardens. It has developed slowly and organically around a handsome house, resulting in a layout which is both unexpected and exciting. The use of water in the garden is especially ingenious, with pretty streams, pools and rills that could easily inspire smaller gardens. A flock of placid, coral-pink flamingos is a point of fascination for young and old. The plant nursery is full of good quality, home-grown plants and naturally I succumbed to its charms as well. Mine were a rose called ‘Pearl Drift’, Iris chrysographes (black form), Viola ‘Irish Molly’, Clematis recta ‘Purpurea’, Dahlia ‘Ragged Robin’ and Agapanthus ‘Silver Moon’. Of course, I needed them all, no question. My greatest regret is that I didn’t have time to stop for lunch, which looked good. If it comes to a choice between buying plants and feeding myself, buying plants will always come first. This is a possible but very expensive diet plan.

I was compelled to go back to work for two days before the weekend began. I love my job, but at times like these I’d rather be outside getting my hands dirty. Saturday was a bit of a write-off as I had made plans to spend time with friends. On Sunday I set about the Jungle Garden with a remarkable amount of vigour given I couldn’t actually remember getting home the night before (I do know I was in bed by midnight and I appear to have eaten toast and marmalade before doing so).

I was feeling a little overwhelmed by the task in hand, but quickly found that there’s nothing like getting stuck in to make a job seem less daunting. In the space of eight hours I managed to plant out my aeoniums (a task which requires some delicacy now that some are over 5ft tall), half a dozen colocasias and trays of a superb coleus named ‘Henna’. I also put some effort into grouping my potted plants so that they can start to mingle and knit together. I reckon on them needing a good two months to look established before my garden opening in early August. Ideally visitors won’t be able to detect any pots at all by then and the plants will have formed parallel banks of flower and foliage. TFG.

Who would have imagined that a garden jam-packed with common-or-garden Busy Lizzies would win a gold medal the prestigious Hampton Court Palace Flower Show? Or that such a garden would land Best in Show and the ultimate horticultural accolade, The Tudor Rose Award? Well, thanks to talented designer Matthew Childs and a partnership between DIY giant B&Q and plant breeder Syngenta, such a garden just has …. and it richly deserved to.

Since 2011 the poor old Busy Lizzie, stalwart of hanging baskets and window boxes across the temperate world, tolerant of shade and flowering for months on end, has been struck down by a virulent strain of downy mildew. The disease cannot be controlled by fungicides, consigning one of our favourite garden and house plants to the B list of bedding. Acknowledging the problem, and the popularity of this forgiving little plant, B&Q and Syngenta have brought to market a new breed of Busy Lizzie called ‘Imara’, which means ‘strength’ in Swahili. Not only are ‘Imara Bizzie Lizzies’ highly resistant to downy mildew, but they are also adaptable to sun or shade and will flower from late spring until the first frosts. To me, they appear unrecognisable from the plants we knew and loved before pestilence struck.

This is all great news, but it requires a stretch to imagine Busy Lizzies starring in the top garden at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show. Yet from the moment one rounds the corner and catches sight of this expansive garden, one recognises it as a winner. It’s been a hot, bright show so far this year and the heat really makes this vibrant space quiver with energy. Rich, saturated greens of musa, ficus, aucuba, hosta, canna and osmunda zip and ping in front of graphite-grey hard landscaping elements. Pops of gold, acid-yellow, silver and plum prevent the composition from becoming a monotonous sea of green. Then come the Busy Lizzies in feisty shades of red, orange, magenta a purple, fizzing and popping beneath a leafy canopy, just as they would in the forests of East Africa. The plants were deliberately grown taller for the most shaded parts of the garden to mimic their natural habit as a woodland understory plant. I especially love a section where a mass of cherry-red Busy Lizzies is shot through with pale yellow Virginia wild rye (Elymus virginicus). Apart from a couple of waterlilies and hostas, Busy Lizzies are the only flowers in this garden.

What is clever about the design is that it offers varied and interesting views from the outside in, deftly demonstrating the power of the diagonal in creating depth and the illusion of greater space. Nothing infuriates me more than a show garden that cannot be appreciated from its perimeter. This is why I had no great appreciation for Chelsea’s Best in Show, which appeared to be designed almost to the exclusion of the outside viewer. This is all well and good in a private garden, but not at a flower show: there’s something not very inclusive about a show garden that looks in on itself. Matthew Childs’ garden is exciting from every angle, the saturated colours refusing to pale in even the brightest of sunlight. A stiff breeze added to the exotic feel on Monday … as if a tropical storm had just blown through. Water is incorporated boldly and seamlessly, dotted here and there with Thalia dealbata and Cyperus papyrus, which are tender but fabulous pond plants. A feature in at least three show gardens this year, an outdoor bar suggests infinite entertaining opportunities. There is even the option to retire to a small studio with a bed inside, should all the socialising get too much for you. Surprise, surprise, all the materials used are available to buy at B&Q and that in itself will be a revelation to some.

It is hard for the other show gardens to compete with the scale and sheer exuberance of the Bursting Busy Lizzie Garden, but the accolades are genuinely deserved for the quality of the build and the imaginative design alone. The scale of the structural planting, including mighty specimens of Ailanthus altissima ‘Purple Dragon’ (tree of heaven) and Gleditsia triacanthos ‘Sunburst’ (honey locust), mean that every last bit of attention is captured by the garden and not by the RHS’s ugly tents and flags. Of course this design was always going to appeal to me with my love of bright colours and tropical foliage, but I was not alone. I would be no surprise if it were to land People’s Choice and secure a clean sweep of the top awards.

To sum up this is a garden that both a passionate gardener and a socialite might enjoy. It could be adapted to be high or low maintenance, although I should note that the tender nature of some of the planting, including cycads, bananas and Busy Lizzies, mean it would take some revision for a more northerly location. The majority of plants used would overwinter outside with some care. Whilst the hard landscaping elements seem appealingly affordable, the larger plants certainly would not be, unless one was prepared to be patient. The consolation is that many would be fast growers.

It’s great to see the Busy Lizzie restored to health and, one hopes, to our gardens. I have relied heavily on white-flowered varieties in previous gardens and marvelled at their willingness to grow neatly and flower abundantly. If you still have any gaps left (and heaven knows I don’t!), get to B&Q, snap up some some ‘Imara Bizzie Lizzies’ and let us all know how you get on. TFG.

Plant List

Trees and Shrubs

• Imara Bizzie Lizzies (available exclusively from B&Q in 16 colours)
• Ailanthus altissima ‘Purple Dragon’
• Chamaerops humilis
• Ficus carica
• Gleditsia triacanthos ‘Sunburst‘
• Trachycarpus fortunei
• Aucuba japonica ‘Crotonifolia‘
• Eriobotrya japonica
• Fatsia japonica
• Mahonia ‘Soft Caress‘
• Mahonia lomarifolia
• Sorbaria sorbifolia ‘Sem‘

Foliage Plants

• Asarum europaeum
• Cornus canadensis
• Epimedium rubrum
• Epimedium x versicolor ‘Neosulphureum’
• Euphorbia oblongata
• Gunnera magellanica
• Musa basjoo
• Rodgersia podophylla
• Rodgersia podophylla ‘Braunlaub‘
• Rodgersia sambucifolia
• Elymus virginicus
• Hakonechloa macra
• Phaenosperma globosa

Ferns and Marginal Plants

• Asplenium tricomanes
• Athyrium filix-femina ‘Frizelliae‘
• Blechnum spicant
• Cyperus papyrus
• Cyrtomium falcatum
• Cyrtomium fortunei
• Dryopteris atrata
• Dryopteris erythrosora ‘Brilliance‘
• Osmunda regalis
• Osmunda regalis ‘Purpurea‘
• Polystichum polyblepharum
• Polystichum setiferum ‘Herrenhausen‘
• Hosta ‘Devon Green‘
• Hosta ‘June‘
• Hosta ‘Krossa Regal‘
• Hosta ‘Sum and Substance‘
• Hosta ‘Guacamole‘
• Canna ‘Tropicanna‘
• Hedychium gardnerianum
• Thalia dealbata

Climbers

• Clematis armandii
• Muehlenbeckia complexa
• Vitis coignetiae

It was raining as we arrived at Hunting Brook; a light, steady drizzle filtering through opaque air. The lanes leading to the garden were bounded by sullen brambles and parched grasses, begging for relief from the heat and drought. Inside, thalictrums and fennels were spangled with water droplets, bowing gently beneath the unfamiliar weight. Rain in Ireland is not unexpected, but this summer it has been rare indeed. The shower, if you can call it that, lasted a couple of hours before dissolving into heavy humidity.

The first impression one gets of Hunting Brook is that this is a humble, country garden. There are no fancy gates or swanky signs, no tea room or entrance kiosk; just a small gravelled car park, a few handwritten chalkboards and a box to put your entry fee in. These uncomplicated arrangements remind me of many private gardens I have visited in Cornwall and are just how I like them; the garden should always be the main event. In a glade surrounding a small, chalet-style building unfolds an extraordinary garden. It is the creation of a remarkable plantsman, Jimi Blake, a man who carries his genius with endearing lightness.

I have written before about the difference between good gardens and great ones. Great gardens possess a series of qualities, some relatively easy to attain with hard work, talent and money. However atmosphere is a quality that requires both a sense of place and a gardener with imagination, vision and genuine understanding of what the land can achieve. To create atmosphere takes time and constant reappraisal. Hunting Brook has it in spades. I was immediately struck by a pervading sense of the primeval, at first suggested by a wonderful patch of Celmisia semicordata ‘David Shackleton’, a native of New Zealand, and then by a sweeping bank planted with Aralia echinocaulis raised from seed collected in China. Everywhere one looks there are plants which challenge the eye and the brain, conjuring up images of Jurassic forests and testing the identification skills of all but the most knowledgeable plant collector. Cryptomeria japonica ‘Araucaroides’ points its scaly green fingers towards you, as if it were saying ‘you there! Bet you don’t know what I am?’.

To suggest this is a merely a garden of curiosities would be quite wrong. Hunting Brook is a plantsman’s garden in every way, home to one of Ireland’s finest private botanical collections. It is also a highly experimental place. Jimi throws most gardening conventions to the wind, which is something only an experienced gardener can do. This confidence and adventurousness is what makes Hunting Brook so special. Everywhere one looks there’s an unexpected pairing, an unidentifiable plant, a coming together of colours that ought not to work, but yet they do. It’s a horticultural melting pot of ideas, and good ones at that. It is also beautiful, intriguing and romantic. Jimi gives himself space to develop his planting ideas, building their theatricality and richness through a constant process of addition and subtraction. If Hunting Brook were an ecosystem, it would be one of the most diverse on the planet.

I could attempt to describe Jimi’s planting schemes but I would not do them justice. I was so intent on listening to his gentle musings that I had little inclination to stop and take notes or photographs. Perhaps I shall regret this, but somehow I think not. Sometimes it’s better to be in the moment.

At the very least I should provide you with some kind of overview. Hunting Brook covers around 20 acres, 5 of which are garden, with the remainder being mature woodland or meadow. Near the entrance there are two gently sloping banks on either side of a gravel driveway. The shadier bank is dominated by the aforementioned aralias, underplanted with bamboos, ferns, ligularias, rheums, hardy geraniums, astrantias, astelias and alstroemerias, to name but a few. The opposite, sunny bank runs right up to the boundary hedge and is thickly planted with sun-loving plants from the common-or-garden calendula to not so common Aeonium hierrense. It’s a heady mix. Again, too many exciting plants to name them all. In the same bed you’ll discover Pseudopanax ‘Chainsaw’ (there are panaxes everywhere you look at Hunting Brook), Salvia lutea ‘Kirstenbosch’ and Musschia wollastonii alongside echinaceas, dahlias, salvias and linarias. Jimi is constantly adjusting the planting to achieve balance, different effects and to accommodate new plants. We quickly established that we shared a weakness for anything quirky or unusual. The colour scheme in this border is predominantly green, orange, apricot and smoky bronze, punctuated by flashes of white and silver.

Behind the house lies Ashley’s garden, created on the site of a former carpark. Again, this is a magical meeting of the familiar and unfamiliar, a freestyle swathe of planting where familiar phlox, sinister-looking Pseudopanax crassifolius and lush Musa ‘Tiger Stripes’ rub along as happily as can be. As the sun finally beats the rain into submission the rich magentas, purples, pinks and reds in this garden come alive, softened by a million water droplets.

A sheltered space at the back of Jimi’s house is known as the Garden Room, a small, gravelled rectangle bounded by some of the most exotic and exciting plants in the garden. My mind is so stuffed full of plant names by this stage that I fail to absorb most of what I’m told. Close by, Jimi is waiting for a large number of dahlias to bloom, all grown from seed collected in South and Central America. Both Jimi and his sister June are fans of these tall, single-flowered dahlias which are so much easier to combine with other plants than their fancier cousins.

The woodland garden is another world altogether and quite unexpected after the bright expanse of Ashley’s Garden. Here the narrow Hunting Brook, after which the garden is named, carves a deep valley, further accentuated by towering beech trees. Jimi has cleared an almighty glade in the centre of the wood allowing light to fall on an extensive collection of Scheffleras, large-leaved magnolias and other woody plants, many grown from wild-collected seed. We stop to discuss a gigantic and dangerous-looking thistle grown from seed collected in Tibet. Every plant seems to have a story attached to it. In another 10-20 years one can imagine this will begin to rival the likes of Heligan’s Jungle Garden, only it will have a Jimi Blake twist. The valley is not over cultivated, with just a few choice, large-leaved plants such as Gunnera killipiana, Zantedeschia ‘Hercules’, rheum and rogersia used to enhance the natural vegetation.

Emerging on the other side of the valley we emerge in a sloping 4-acre meadow with views across the fields to the Wicklow Mountains. A serpentine path is mown through the long grasses where soon butterfly orchids will bloom. A circular route takes us past a Bronze Age standing stone, a reminder of Hunting Brook’s ancient past, and then back through the valley to Jimi’s house. Here we stop for tea and biscuits and talk about people, plants and books. My kind of conversation.

Jimi Blake strikes me as a restless, generous and kindly man, quite unlike anyone I’ve met before. He is calm, yet energetic and easy to get along with. For me this visit to Hunting Brook was one of those special moments which has made me think long and hard about how I want to live and garden in future. It’s given me confidence in my efforts whilst spurring me on to try new things. On that basis we should all visit Hunting Brook at least once, notebook in hand, mind open to the infinite possibilities of gardening. TFG.

Jimi will be walking and talking with Monty Don at Longmeadow during this Friday’s edition of Gardeners’ World. Tune in to BBC2 at 8pm.

With special thanks to the wonderful Carol Marks for being my guide and companion, and for the best introduction to Irish gardens one could wish for.

Ten Key Plants in Jimi’s Garden during July

1. Calendula ‘Indian Prince’ – a favourite annual of Jimi’s, used extensively on the sunny bank.
2. Salvia argentea – a biennial or short-lived perennial with distinctive, felted, silver-grey leaves.
3. Linaria ‘Peachy’ – a lovely, frothy perennial with pale peach flowers and grey-green foliage.
4. Dahlia ‘Night Butterfly’ – an operatic collarette dahlia. Velvet-red outer petals surrounding a ruff of smaller white and magenta florets. Loved by bees.
5. Senecio christobalensis – one of two plants that came home in my hand luggage. Carries olive-green leaves the size of a dinner plate on furry red stems.
6. Alstroemeria ‘Orange Glory’ – a strong grower with deep orange petals adorned with purple markings at their tips.
7. Tagetes patula – not the dumpy, bedding marigold, but a tall plant with flowers the colour of burnished bronze.
8. Thalictrum ‘Elin’ – A giant of a thalictrum producing clouds of pink blossom that reach for the sky on stems up to 10ft tall.
9. Salvia patens ‘Guanajuato’ – a tuber-forming salvia with royal blue flowers and dark markings on the rough leaves. Drool-inducingly good with yellow dahlias.
10. Aeonium ‘Voodoo’ – somewhat similar to ‘Zwartkop’, which is the variety I grow at The Watch House. Blissfully easy to propagate.