Our gardening expert enjoys the many highlights of this year’s Chelsea Flower Show
WORDS: SUSIE WHITE; WWW.SUSIE-WHITE.CO.UK, @COTTAGEGARDENER. PHOTOGRAPHS: SUSIE WHITE; GRAPHICS: SHUTTERSTOCK
Visiting the RHS Chelsea Flower Show is the highlight of my gardening year.
It’s a dazzling display of design, craftsmanship and inspiration, the very pinnacle of horticultural excellence.
I’m lucky to go on Press Day which is a chance to take photographs, meet designers and wander inside some of the gardens.
I take home ideas and get a feel for garden trends. This year, nature and sustainability are at the core with wildflowers, hedges, trees and reused materials being strongly featured.
Colours varied from cool and calming to dynamic and vibrant.
Tom Stuart-Smith’s eagerly awaited design for the National Garden Scheme was sublime and I wasn’t surprised that it won a gold medal.
A tapestry of foliage beneath coppiced hazels had spires of white foxgloves rising through a groundcover of woodruff, astrantia, ferns and lily-of-the-valley.
As a long-time volunteer for the National Garden Scheme, I was particularly looking forward to seeing this garden.
At its centre was a beautiful hut designed by Tom’s son, Ben, and clad in UK grown cleft oak, a place for volunteers and visitors to meet.
After the Show, the garden will be relocated to Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, and a new Maggie’s centre for people undergoing cancer treatment.
Every garden must now have an afterlife, with plants or entire gardens benefitting communities or charities.
From cool to hot, the Octavia Hill Garden designed by Ann-Marie Powell celebrated the pioneering social reformer and founder of the National Trust.
This urban community garden was full of plants for wildlife with places to sit and experience the atmosphere.
The colours were gorgeous, a mix of rich purple, orange and lime green, the standout plant being the plum-purple poppy called ‘Lauren’s Grape’.
It’s no wonder the garden won the very first Children’s Choice Award.
As well as eight main show gardens there were smaller sanctuary gardens, house plant studios, a Roman garden and balcony and container gardens.
The Junglette Garden echoed Kerala’s tropical planting with tree ferns arching above bananas, foliage plants and orange nasturtiums, all inspired by the sponsor’s own balconies.
The Ecotherapy Garden imagine
