What was the height of fashion at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show?
Xanthe White; Getty Images
I may be only 1.65m, but I didn’t expect to have to crane my neck to see the tops of flower spikes or wear my sunglasses to gaze upon iridescent blooms at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. This was my third visit to the show, and second as an exhibitor, but still I was unprepared for the scale of it. I felt like a shrunken Alice in Wonderland. Beneath the Great Pavilion, which is itself the largest marquee I’m ever likely to see, not even the humble delphinium or begonia escaped the super-size treatment.
The marquee was a plant lover’s haven, where you could see orchid collections from around the world and meet specialists in plants ranging from grass to maples. Name almost any plant family and it was represented there, with breeders showing off their best specimens.
Outside were the show gardens, where trends are set and the crème de la crème of Chelsea designers show off their skills by creating signature pieces that average around 220sq m and cost on average £300,000. This year these gardens tipped a new scale.
The B&Q Vertical Garden, with its focus on sustainability, took the record for the tallest garden in Chelsea history. A vertical glass tower, the five-storey-high modern version of a greenhouse – with a green wall of perennial herbs, propagation shelves up the stairwell and windowboxes full of all sorts of vegetables at each level – was designed to demonstrate food could be grown anywhere.
The co-designer, landscape architect Patrick Collins, told me the garden was aimed more at encouraging people to think about how they could include food-production architecture, rather than a working model of how to do it.
Elements of this concept could be applied to all sorts of communal housing projects. As it stands, you’d need a cherry-picker to grab some thyme for dinner, but perhaps a similar green wall could be retrofitted onto a wall next to a fire escape or within reach of the neighbours’ window. The pottages below were also more attractive and evocative than a real working garden, but included examples of some unexpected edible plants, the most surprising being Hosta sieboldiana, which apparently can be cooked like spinach and served wilted. I couldn’t find anyone who had actually tried it, but I have plenty of snails at home that can vouch for its flavour.
The 9m steel-framed garden also featured a 5m “insect hotel”, with 90 “rooms” to house different insects, made by schoolchildren. Although a playful gimmick, this steered people’s minds towards a more holistic view of life in their gardens.
Alongside the tallest garden was the largest, designed by UK gardening personality Diarmuid Gavin, an Irishman famous for his over-the-top stunts. This year was no exception.
Above his garden hung a 16m-long vibrant pink pod, lined inside and out with lawn, and planted with roses, astilbes and hostas. Two garden seats inside were inscribed with the name of his father and mother-in-law, who died earlier this year. I made several requests to have a sit-down chat with him, then he finally sent a message for me to be at the garden at 9.00am for a ride in this giant swing seat. Second best, perhaps, but I was happy to settle for a closer look at both the garden and the gimmick, which was apparently inspired by the floating islands of Pandora, created for James Cameron’s sci-fi film .
As you would imagine, hanging a giant floating “eye” above a garden elicited a few snide asides from some of the more “serious” designers, but Gavin’s garden was a well-composed and subtly strong piece of landscape design. Simple circular topiary balls, closely planted together, created beautiful cloud forms that were set among sweeps of grasses and hostas. The contrast of forms and textures was inspirational.
Among the plantings were large pools of water, some blackened, to create crisp reflections of the folly floating above. A path of cortened steel curved through the elegant plantings to the launch pad for the pod, which is designed to be suspended 25m above the ground.
Aside from the garden’s half-million-pound price tag, the need to have a crane to move your garden furniture around may not have added to the take-home appeal, but the pure novelty value of taking off in a richly planted private pod above the thronging crowds was good enough for Jeffery Archer and Helen Mirren, and good enough for me and my team.
At the top we looked out through rose blooms to the river on one side, and over the show and great plane trees to the other. It was a special moment.
As we were lowered back to earth, the crowds below flashed their cameras and peered eagerly to see if the witty Irishman was afloat in it with one of his famous friends. We paused and dropped our sunglasses with an air of importance as we re-entered the garden via the steel runway.
Xanthe White; Getty Images
Although Gavin’s garden would have done well without the showstopper dangling above the crowds, the award for Best in Show went to previous gold medal winner Cleve West for a tranquil sunken garden inspired by Roman ruins in Benghazi, Libya. The dry-stack walls were beautifully constructed, with the Cotswold limestone being used in various forms, ranging from gravel to cobbled steps, throughout the garden.
Large contemporary versions of ancient columns (by sculptors Serge Bottagisio and Agnes Decoux) framed the garden and connected it to its source of inspiration while clay pipes spouted water into a viaduct from a mustard-coloured wall.
The featured planting style appealed to me most, however.
In contrast to Gavin’s clipped topiary, West’s buxus were untamed. Plants were grown in natural drifts and the varieties used were all self-seeders or colonising plants that would spread around the garden over time. It’s a confident designer who can compose a garden that is expected to take on a life of its own.
Although there were many crowd favourites, the opinion seemed to be that no particular garden was unanimously hailed as best. Despite the media picking the trends for this year’s Chelsea as wildflowers and water features, I’d call it big, really big and even bigger. Surely it has now reached its peak. For next year my money is that we’ll see a simple subtlety return, and despite this being harder to sell to sponsors, who love grand designs, I know the crowds will love it.