The Garden - Marcus Barnett

RHS Chelsea Flower Show
Silver-Gilt; The President’s Award
Gold; The Diamond Jubilee Award
Gold
Pattaya City & Nong Nooch Tropical Botanical Garden from Thailand
(above) turned many heads with one of the boldest exhibits in the Great
Pavilion, a colourful temple made of orchids. The Diamond Jubilee Award
was received by Birmingham City Council (left) which staged a superb
display celebrating the 300th anniversary of Birmingham Cathedral.
The UK Space Agency (above) launched an initiative, aided by the RHS
Campaign for School Gardening, enabling schools to apply for salad rocket
seeds that have been to the International Space Station. The President’s
Award went to Harperley Hall Farm Nurseries, Co. Durham (right), which
displayed a sumptuous collection of choice woodland plants.
Chelsea Flower Show 2015
RHS
From the magnificent splendour of Great Pavilion exhibits to varied designs in three categories
again brimming with horticultural excellence. Here are some highlights from the gardens,
of gardens, the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2015 (sponsored by M&G Investments) was once
plant exhibits and show features Photography: Sarah Cuttle, Neil Hepworth and Tim Sandall
A rare moment of calm in the Great
Pavilion, where more than 100 colourful,
carefully designed displays were bursting
with blooms at the peak of perfection.
Ranging from floristry to the science of
horticulture and outstanding exhibits of all
kinds (such as those pictured above), there
was something to cater for everyone’s tastes.
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July 2015 | The Garden
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RHS Chelsea Flower Show
‘The Laurent-Perrier
Chatsworth Garden’
Add texture and interest to low formal
hedging by cutting parts to different heights
and widths – simple but effective, especially
deployed against lush, informal planting.
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The Garden | July 2015
Design: Cook’s Garden Centre
Design: Adam Frost; Garden: The homebase urban retreat
garden, in association with Macmillan Cancer Support
Design: james basson
Garden: A perfumer’s Garden in Grasse
Designer Graham Bodle made beautiful use of large sculptural
pieces of deadwood, giving the garden a wild, stag’s horn look.
Large rocks and tree-stump seats, combined with a limited
planting palette of pines, grasses, maples and other understated
plants, were woven into an evocative – and distinctly sculptural
– whole. (Sponsors: Doncaster Deaf School; Walker’s Nurseries.)
Design: drointon nurseries
Plants with vertical forms can bring a
border to life. Here, purple Salvia nemorosa
‘Caradonna’, Lupinus ‘Masterpiece’, pink
Verbascum and Camassia harmonise.
If a structural element lets light in, why not
underplant it – or even the seat – perhaps
with doughty hart’s tongue ferns and
Saxifraga x urbium (London pride)?
‘The Sculptor’s Picnic Garden
by Walker’s Nurseries’
Break from traditional garden lighting by
threading systems through plants and
winding around branches. Unobtrusive and
organic by day, they glow softly by night.
Cylinders of corrugated galvanised metal
can turn a paved area or patio of any size
into a garden – simply arrange them on
top of a thick mulch.
Reusing household items can provide
opportunities to make highlights from the
ordinary, such as this sculptural ‘bug hotel’
crafted from rusted cans.
Although many gardeners do not have
room for a traditional auricula theatre,
a contemporary, temporary, alternative
is to display pots on stepladders.
Design: sarah eberle and tom hare
Garden: Breast Cancer Haven Garden supported by nelsons
Gold; Best Fresh Garden
Gold; Best Artisan Garden
Design: Sean Murray
The Great Chelsea Garden Challenge winner
The bent, rusted metal structure lending the
garden such visual dynamism was designed
by Howard Miller to depict the effects of
invisible dark matter on the universe – its
gravity bending everything, including light.
(Sponsors: Science and Technology Facilities
Council, Liverpool John Moores University,
Urbis Design.)
Amid the excitement of every Chelsea Flower Show, it is easy to miss some of the considered details.
Here are some ideas that could translate to gardens of a more typically domestic scale.
Design: Chris Beardshaw
Garden: The Morgan Stanley Healthy Cities Garden
‘Dark Matter Garden
for the National
Schools’ Observatory’
Ideas to take home from Chelsea 2015
Design: Chris Beardshaw
Garden: The Morgan Stanley Healthy Cities Garden
Designed by Dan Pearson, this remarkable
tour de force of naturalistic planting was
named Best Show Garden. In the difficult
‘triangle’ site – viewable from all angles – it
used 300 tonnes of rocks from Chatsworth
(and three tonnes of leafmould) to evoke
the estate’s Trout Stream and its Rock
Garden, begun by head gardener Joseph
Paxton in 1842. It was based on some of the
lesser-known aspects of the 43ha (105 acre)
garden at the Derbyshire estate, to which it
has been returned after the show. (Sponsors:
Champagne Laurent-Perrier, Chatsworth.)
Design: Howard miller design; Garden: dark matter
garden for the National schools’ observatory
Gold; Best Show Garden
Adding a hard landscape edge between a
lawn and border can eliminate the need for
edging. These ‘mowing strips’ act as buffer
zones between turf and flowerbed.
Large slices of wood with the bark left on
make wonderfully natural, low-rising steps
with a rustic appearance – an interesting
alternative to stone or planed timber.
July 2015 | The Garden
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RHS Chelsea Flower Show
New and interesting plants from the show
Chelsea
Plant of the
Year
‘The Breakthrough
Breast Cancer Garden’
p10
Drawing inspiration from the genetic research funded
by the charity, Ruth Willmott’s garden was based on the
DNA double helix. It featured a curved stone pathway
crossed by ribbons of pink planting; a green and white
planting scheme provided the backdrop. (Sponsor:
Breakthrough Breast Cancer.)
From the Great Pavilion came a selection of choice plants and eagerly anticipated new introductions.
Silver-Gilt; RHS People’s Choice Fresh Garden Award
Gold
Zantedeschia ‘Flamingo’
Viola ‘Frilly Dilly’
Clematis Liberty (‘Zo08095’)
Hardy, pale pink arum lily, shorter and
more compact than its white relation.
Available from Burncoose Nursery,
Cornwall at £10; 01209 860316.
Upright stems good for cutting, with frilly,
scented long-lasting cream blooms ageing
to a soft mauve-blue. Available 2016.
Victorian Violas, Lincs; 01522 686343.
Raspberry-pink blooms with yellow anthers
in May–June and August. Good in pots and
beds; will reach 1.8m (6ft). Thorncroft
Clematis, Norfolk at £15; 01953 850407.
Camassia leichtlinii ‘Maybelle’
Dianthus Mojito(‘Wp15Pie41’)
Geum ‘Sea Breeze’
Flowering in late-April–May, this hardy
cultivar, with intense blue flowers, is a good
choice for heavier soils. £6.50 for five bulbs
from Avon Bulbs, Somerset; 01460 242177.
One of five new scented garden pinks from
Whetman Pinks, Devon. Hardy, droughttolerant, with long stems and large flowers.
Plugs are £1.75 each; 01626 863328.
Bright flowers about 5cm (2in) across with
folded, wavy petals. Full sun or part shade
reaching 60cm (2ft). Shown by the Hardy
Plant Society, Kent Group; 01386 710317.
Rosa The Ancient Mariner
(‘Ausoutcry’)
Raspberry Ruby Beauty (‘Nr7’)
Trillium ‘Green Frost’
Multi-branching, thornless form bearing
masses of summer fruits on bushes of just
90cm (3ft) high. £17.99 for a plant in a 3-litre
pot. Thompson & Morgan; 0844 573 1818.
Seed-raised hybrid from Harveys Garden
Plants, Suffolk with beautifully marked
foliage and dark purple flowers. Plants in
1-litre pots cost £20 each; 01359 233363.
Vigorous rose with myrrh-scented blooms
from June to first frost. David Austin Roses,
Wolverhampton, £18.50; 01902 376300.
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The Garden | July 2015
‘The Homebase Urban Retreat
Garden, in association with
Macmillan Cancer Support’
Designed as an urban community garden, Adam Frost’s creation
celebrated the striking design principles of the Bauhaus movement.
Modernist materials such as concrete and Corten steel were combined
with geometric shapes to demonstrate how green space can be
incorporated into our towns and cities, blending and contrasting hardedged structures with the softness of nature. (Sponsor: Homebase.)
Giving front
gardens a new look
In support of the RHS campaign
Greening Grey Britain, Sean Murray,
winner of the BBC’s Great Chelsea
Garden Challenge, showed that car
parking space need not evict plants.
✤ Cumbrian slate appeared
throughout the garden in
different forms. In the drive
(foreground), slate slabs and
chippings, loose and also
laid edgeways, provided a
permeable, textured surface.
✤ To contrast the grey slate,
planting softened the edges.
Hostas, violas, grasses and
sedges blurred boundaries.
Low-growing plants such as
Ajuga and Asarum nestled
between the driveway tracks.
✤ Monolithic, structural, black
beams injected a sense of
height to the garden and also
provided a stark contrast to
the grey stone. Climbing roses
on some of the beams helped
to relieve their severity.
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RHS Chelsea Flower Show
Silver-Gilt; BBC / RHS People’s Choice Show Garden Award
‘Sentebale - Hope
in Vulnerability’
Matt Keightley’s design was completed in
conjunction with Prince Harry and evoked
the native environmental characteristics
of Lesotho. Inspired by the Mamohato
Children’s Centre, due to open there this
year, the garden featured a central pavilion
with striking columns, a lively waterfall
and colourful planting reminiscent of the
landscape. (Sponsor: The David Brownlow
Charitable Foundation.)
‘The
Telegraph Garden’
Providing a more formal element to the
show, this garden (inspired by early
20th-century Dutch art movement
De Stijl) was built around a strong
rectilinear geometry and bold blocks of
planting. Feature walls punctuated the
boundary hedges in stark contrast to
the plants while trees and low hedges
of yew (Taxus baccata) and hornbeam
(Carpinus betulus) acted as the main
structural elements among a series of
paths and waterways. (Design: Marcus
Barnett; sponsor: The Telegraph.) 
More on
Chelsea
For more on the RHS Chelsea
Flower Show 2015 visit:
www.rhs.org.uk/chelsea
✤ Download the full medals
lists for all the garden and Great
Pavilion categories, along with the
Best in Show awards.
✤ Browse profiles of all the
gardens, and find inspiring
elements for your own plot.
✤ View highlights from the Great
Pavilion including the 2015 RHS
Chelsea Plant of the Year
(see News, p10).
✤ Watch videos from the
show including Greening
Grey Britain with Chris
Young, Editor of The Garden,
and plant highlights with
Assistant Editor, Phil Clayton.
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The Garden | July 2015
Gold