It’s that magical time again! Every year, I wonder if it can continue to inspire me as much and every year, of course it does!
As a starting point, here are the Show Gardens, from south to north along Main Avenue.
1. Terrence Higgins Trust Bridge to 2030 Garden by Matthew Childs
The big designers aren’t often given this first plot as I enter the Royal Hospital grounds (from the media, not the public entrance) and it can be a bit of an underwhelming start. But The Terrence Higgins Trust have put on a good show this year. Colour is such an important aspect of a garden to me and I thought the soft greens and pops of soft and deeper colours was really beautiful.
Unfortunately, I suspect they won’t win Gold, as the implementation didn’t seem to quite live up to the now impossibly high Chelsea standards. Planting was also a bit sparse in areas, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
2. Muscular Dystrophy UK – Forest Bathing Garden by Ula Maria
The Muscular Dystrophy garden was a Crocus garden – the nursery who have grown plants for and overseen construction for 12 of the last 24 Best in Show Chelsea gardens. It was very beautifully put together with nothing jarring and I loved the flint pavilion, designed to reflect the muscle cells connected with the charity it supports.
For me, however, it was just a little flat. Both in literal terms, with quite a same-height-throughout underplanting of the trees and in terms of its general sameyness throughout. Pretty, but one glance and you had really seen it.
3. St James’s Piccadilly: Imagine the World to be Different by Robert Myers
This is a pocket park for a Wren-designed church in central London and the balance of structure and delicate planting is beautifully executed. The built wall was enormous and really captured the essence of Wren’s architecture and the traditional water feature worked brilliantly.
I really loved this little sanctuary, which will be relocated to Piccadilly after the show but if I had to be critical, there was a lot of hard landscaping (necessary for practical reasons?) and some of the plants looked somewhat as though they were still in their pots – one of these next to one of those – rather than a more established planting that so many clever gardens manage to portray.
4. The National Autistic Society Garden by Sophie Parmenter and Dido Milne
The designers placed a strong focus on the re-using of materials for the National Autistic Society Garden. Obviously this is highly commendable and I have a particularly strong dislike for wastage, but I felt the built structures were over powering and jarring.
There were pretty pockets, like this large display of Camassia, but I feel at Chelsea the space has to work quite hard and I would have liked to have seen somewhat more complex planting.
5. Stroke Association’s Garden for Recovery by Miria Harris
I completely fell in love with the orangey Cytisus ‘Lena’ in the National Autistic Society garden. There were such pretty plantings with exquisite colour combinations, although I kept finding myself referring to it as the ‘rainbow’ garden, as all the blues were grouped together, then all the oranges, yellows and so on.
I also like the fact that they created an undulating topography with little corners to sit and relax in, but I found some of the hardscaping a little too dominant and the freshly secateur-cut ‘fallen’ pine branches a little forced.
6. WaterAid Garden by Tom Massey and Je Ahn
It’s funny how you can research the gardens and feel quite sure about which you will like and dislike but on the day find yourself quite entirely wrong! The WaterAid Garden was just that – not a Singapore Botanic Gardens copy with an overemphasis on water management, but an exquisitely complex and convincing garden. That told me!
I realised that complex and convincing was what I looked for at Chelsea. A garden that looks as if it has always been there, without any jarring but with enough complexity to hold my interest as I keep discovering more and more. This was the garden that just kept drawing me back this year and which I wanted to study in such detail that I could replicate its planting concepts.
7. The Octavia Hill Garden by Blue Diamond with the National Trust by Ann-Marie Powell with the Blue Diamond Team
Things were hotting up as I got towards the end of Main Avenue. The one I anticipated liking the most would be last but this penultimate garden was hot in so many ways. It was the garden of pure unadulterated joy which brought a huge smile to my face every time I approached it – it was a proper flower garden for the Flower Show.
It made me sigh, it was so uplifting and I overheard someone summing it up particularly well: “the garden is as exuberant as its designer”! Ann-Marie Powell (left, above) is quite a character, delighting 63,000 followers of her ‘myrealgarden’ Instagram account with her never-ending energy and passion for plants and for life.
8. The National Garden Scheme Garden by Tom Stuart-Smith
This was the garden I really wanted to see. I’m an enormous fan of Tom Stuart-Smith’s work and it’s a decade since he last had a Show Garden at Chelsea. But, oh Tom, of course it was great, but it wasn’t Tom-great, to me. If there’s any question over whether you can have too many flowers in a garden, I think this was the garden to answer it for me. Just too much.
Amongst the full-on Azalea whiteness, there were other pockets of softer planting which I loved, but somehow there was little subtlety in the overall effect. I wanted to love it and normally adore the feeling of being hugged and embraced by billowing flowers all around me, but sadly my hopes were higher than the reality.
So, that’s all the Show Gardens. You know I love to guess which will get Best in Show. My money is on Tom Massey’s WaterAid Garden this year. I think Ann-Marie Powell’s is another very strong runner, but feel Tom’s shows more innovation.
But we shall see. Tomorrow. In the meantime, what do YOU think??
