Windswept and Interesting – RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2015

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Anneka Rice, Beth Chatto, Chatsworth, Dan Pearson, Great Pavilion, Jo Thompson, Matthew Wilson, RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2015, RHS Hyde Hall, Sissinghurst

Protea on Charles Albone’s Time in Between Garden © Ian Curley

I spent yesterday immersed in plants, from orchids and exotic proteas to classic English roses and native elm trees. There were gardens created by the best designers and plantspeople from Britain and beyond. One enormous marquee – the Great Pavilion – a temple to plant passion with nurseries from across the country. There were sculptures, greenhouses and all manner of garden-related bit and bobs. This was press day at RHS Chelsea Flower Show and it really doesn’t get much better than this for someone who loves plants.

On a cold, grey morning in south-west London someone had clearly forgotten to mention to the weather that it was meant to be spring and, as if on cue, the spots of rain started to fall just as we entered the showground at 8am. Press Day is the day when suits, summery frocks and fabulous hats abound. Exhibitors, designers and sponsors want to look their best for the press calls, photos and, later in the day, the Queen and other members of the Royal Family. I had huge admiration for those ladies who had looked out of the window that morning and had disregarded the weather forecasts and thought ‘I’m wearing those heels and floaty dress regardless’. Then there were the rest of us in waterproofs huddled under umbrellas trying desperately to stay warm. Later on that morning Anneka Rice would enter the Great Pavilion looking like it was a summer’s day outside despite the fact that a deluge of rain was pounding the roof. I’ve always been somewhat in awe of women who manage to look glamorous in situations when I look bedraggled and windswept. I’m sure Anneka must have had lots of those heat pads strategically stitched into her dress, as I was wishing I’d worn a second pair of socks and some thermals at that point. I think she must win the award for smile of the day – like the ray of sunshine we were hoping would come from the sky at some point.

Despite the weather the plants shone and looking back now through the photos you really can’t tell that it felt more like March than May. A testament to all the hard work that goes into creating these gardens and the nurturing of plants over the previous months and, of course, Wellyman’s lovely photos.

Dan Pearson’s Chatsworth inspired garden © Ian Curley

I was giddy with excitement at the prospect of seeing Dan Pearson’s Chatsworth inspired garden and Jo Thompson’s design with its natural swimming pool. Seriously, I’m like a child before Christmas in the period before Chelsea. These two gardens, in particular, had caught my eye because they looked so different from the more typical Chelsea show garden. I often find some of the show gardens to be a little too similar – very masculine, blocky and sometimes a bit too slick for me, very suited to their sponsors and potential clients in the City but no spaces I can warm to. The space alongside Main Avenue is divide up into rectangles which need to be viewed from two sides, both elements which create restrictions on the designer from the start. It could also be why some of the more successful and unusual gardens in recent years have been those off Main Avenue where they have a slightly different footprint.

Dan Pearson’s Chatsworth Garden for Laurent Perrier © Ian Curley

Dan Pearson’s garden inhabits the triangular-shaped spot at the end of Main Avenue. Viewed from all sides, unlike the other gardens, this can prove tricky, but Dan had requested this spot specifically. Dan Pearson is one of the UK’s most successful designers, but it has been over a decade since he last designed a garden at the show. His return has been much-anticipated by fans of his naturalistic planting and take on garden design. His garden this year for Laurent Perrier has been based around the landscape and gardens of Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. Enormous boulders chosen from the estate perched, some of them seemingly precariously, in the space. Around these stones the garden trod the boundary between wild and cultivated. Water meandered through the garden inspired by the trout stream at Chatsworth. The attention to detail was incredible. Honestly I’ve never seen anything like it. My eye was drawn initially to a patch of grasses with red campions and leaf litter mixed in amongst it. Initial thoughts were this had to have been there before the build started and that it was perhaps a piece of the ground poking through from the pre-Chelsea build; it looked just like a patch of woodland glade or hedgerow verge. But, as I took in the rest of the garden, it became clear this had been created. And it really was fabulous. It wasn’t a wow garden in an obvious luscious planting, stunning hard landscaping way. For me, both Jo Thompson’s and Matthew Wilson’s gardens wowed me straight away. Dan’s garden however was much more of a slow burner. I just wanted to keep looking at all of the details then I’d spot something else, another plant like a delightful white ragged robin, or the way the plants mingled together so naturally. This is what made it so different from so many other gardens. From what I have read about Dan and from interviews I have seen with him this very much seemed like a garden which reflected its designer; quiet, thoughtful, unshowy. The judges loved it too, awarding it a gold medal and Best in Show.

Lychnis flos-cuculi ‘White Robin’ on Dan Pearson’s garden © Ian Curley

Jo Thompson’s Writer’s Retreat Garden for M&G Investments takes its inspiration from Vita Sackvile-West’s writing room at Sissinghurst in Kent. Jo and her all-female planting team have created a stunning, feminine garden with voluptuous plantings of roses and species I recognised from my cut flower patch, such as ammi, ridolfia and Gypsophila ‘Covent Garden’. These mingle around the base of an impressive multi-stemmed Betula nigra with fabulously textural, peeling bark – the pinky-apricot tones cleverly reflected in the spires of foxglove ‘Sutton’s Apricot’.

Betula nigra and Digitalis ‘Sutton’s Apricot’ on Jo Thompson’s M&G Retreat Garden © Ian Curley

A richly planted backdrop of trees and shrubs creates a lush boundary and the natural swimming pool looked inviting. I think Jo’s garden is a real stunner and feel slightly disappointed for her and her team that the garden received silver-gilt and not gold, particularly as other gardens which didn’t appeal to me so much won gold.

Jo Thompson’s M&G Retreat Garden © Ian Curley

Matthew Wilson’s garden for the Royal Bank of Canada is inspired by Beth Chatto and his experience of previously managing the gardens at RHS Hyde Hall in Essex, where rainfall levels are similar to those in Beirut. Designed around the idea of a garden which uses water sustainably, the zero-irrigation ‘dry garden’ is packed with beautiful planting. Verbascum ‘Merlin’ was the first to catch my eye, followed by the shrubby Leptospermum scoparium ‘Red Damask’.

Verbascum ‘Merlin’ – Matthew Wilson’s Royal Bank of Canada Garden © Ian Curley

Clumps of striking Californian poppies contrasted with the purple flower spikes of Salvia nemorosa ‘Mainacht’ I started to hanker after my own gravel garden. The dramatic 150-year old macro-bonsai olive tree is spectacular and the steamed ash benches with their sinuous lines crafted by Cornish designer Tom Raffield must surely win the award for the most stunning seats at Chelsea. One of my top three gardens this year.

Matthew Wilson’s Royal Bank of Canada Garden © Ian Curley

You have to be prepared for every eventuality when it comes to the British weather. Swirling winds, low light levels in the Great Pavilion and lashing rain in the morning made photography and note taking tricky particularly as I was often juggling a tripod, umbrella, and notepad. My propped up umbrella nearly took out a couple of plants on a few occasions. I had visions of me being escorted from the showground for taking out an exhibit. Pollen and the tiny barbed seed pods of London plane trees planted around the periphery of the showground whipped up by the wind left most of sneezing, coughing and scratching our eyes, rather ironically like a plant-based biological weapon had been unleashed on Chelsea. We both did passable impressions of a cat coughing up a fur ball on the journey home.

Despite all of this the plants came out on top and I’ve come home brimming with ideas. Mid-May can be a tricky time for gardeners frustrated by the weather and exhausted by the demands of a spring garden. Chelsea is just the fillip this gardener needed.

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Plant Perfection, Celebs and Booze

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Chris Beardshaw, Great Pavilion, Ishihara Kazuyuki, RHS Chelsea Flower Show, RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show

Marc Quinn sculpture RHS Chelsea Flower Show

I’ve focussed quite a bit on the design element and the show gardens in my previous Chelsea posts. In this, my final post about my visit I’d thought I’d share the plants that caught my attention and something of the atmosphere on press day.

J S Pennings De Bilt Hyacinths

The Great Pavilion is truly enormous. The flower marquees at both Malvern and Hampton Court shows are impressive but this place was like an aircraft hangar. If the focus on design outside isn’t your thing then the nursery stands inside the pavilion could certainly absorb you for a whole day. These are plants and flowers at their peak and prime; nurtured over previous months by their nervous growers in the hope that they will be ready in time. All sorts of techniques are employed to achieve the stunning displays and I’m impressed that with one of the coldest springs on record everything looked so remarkable. I could have done with more time to wander around the pavilion and feel I didn’t give many of the stands enough attention. Of those I did see, one of my favourites was the incredible J S Pennings De Bilt hyacinth stand, which I smelt before I even saw it. The perfume really was incredible even on such a cold day. I loved the National Collection of dahlias which showed perfectly the wide range of flowers and forms that are available. I particularly liked the single varieties, especially this ‘Twyning’s Revel’ with its dark stems and foliage and gorgeous pink flowers.

Dahlia ‘Twyning’s Revel’

The display of alliums on the Warmenhoven stand were dramatic and theatrical and gave me a few ideas for containers of my own next year. The Hillier’s stand was incredible. The colour and sheer energy was impressive particularly on such a dull, overcast day, although there was nothing subtle about it. They transport nearly 3,500 plants to Chelsea to build their stand from birch trees so tall they almost scrape the top of the pavilion to the smallest of perennials.

Ishihara Kazuyuki’s An Alcove Garden

I must mention the artisan garden designed by Ishihara Kazuyuki called ‘An Alcove’ or ‘Tokonoma’. The design recreated an area within a traditional Japanese tatami room, somewhere where meetings would take place with important people. Sometimes the gardens that evoke somewhere come in for stick with the accusation that they are a bit clichéd and not cutting edge. I loved it. I have always wanted to visit Japan but I’m not sure I’ll ever get there, so to see a part of their culture up close was a real treat. Mr Kazuyuki’s attention to detail is incredible – the cobbles, the moss, the acers, it was a delight and deservedly won ‘best in show’ in the artisan garden category.

Where were all the gnomes?

For the 100th anniversary gnomes had been given special dispensation and were allowed access to the site. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed I didn’t see any. The two men wandering around in gnome costumes didn’t count in my opinion.

By lunch time the frantic buzz around the show gardens from the press photographers had waned, but as the celebrities who are invited arrived, flash bulbs started to go off once again. Spotting Ringo Starr and his wife, Bond Girl Barbara Bach, I attempted to subtly get a shot for Wellyman of his teenage crush. Barbara Bach of course, not Ringo. Unfortunately I was muscled out of the way by a much more experienced photographer and ended up with a shot of the back of their heads. I did manage to sneak on to Chris Beardshaw’s garden, behind Anneka Rice, when it was opened up for the celebrities to have a wander around. Not because I was particularly interested in her but it did mean I got a much better look at the garden and plants. Another of Wellyman’s crushes he’s rather gutted he wasn’t able to go.

Alcohol was flowing by the time I left, whether it was champagne, Pimms or Mark Diacono’s cocktails. If you were a member of the build team for the Trailfinders Australian garden I think it might have been flowing a little earlier. I was stood next to one of them at 9.30am and he already had a pint of something in his hand. They were all dressed in matching outfits which meant they looked like they were all on a stag do. I can only imagine what their celebrations were like the following day when they found out they had won gold and ‘best in show’. I, on the other hand, was a bit like the rabbit in the advert that didn’t get the Duracell batteries. After only two hours sleep the night before my energy levels were running low by about 2pm and I didn’t think it was wise to partake myself. I would have loved another trip around the Great Pavilion, but my legs wouldn’t take me any further and, with a long drive back to Wales, I wandered out of the show ground just as the police arrived to secure the area for the arrival of the Queen.

I loved my first visit to Chelsea. There are elements of it that are elitist and out of touch with how most of us live and garden. I’d like to see more variety in the designs, more edibles and grow your own on display but it’s good to have something that’s glamorous, exciting and inspiring every once in a while. And, ultimately, Chelsea Flower Show is a great showcase for horticulture.