I always find it fascinating to understand people’s reactions to Chelsea. To understand which gardens won the various medals and awards, which were talked about most and who liked what.
I like to see where I fit within these views and to also look for any evolution over the years. I suppose it’s an ongoing desire to understand why we like some particular garden styles over others. To see what I can learn and apply in my own garden, with a bit of added interest in the psychology of it all. People never stop being interesting!
So, I thought I’d examine four ‘best’ gardens at Chelsea this year in a little more detail.
Best In Show: Horatio’s Garden
The official best in show – the one scored most highly by the judges – was Horatio’s Garden. I’m really happy this came out on top and for the publicity it generates for a fabulous charity putting world class gardens into NHS hospitals.
It’s a difficult brief – trying to make it hospital bed-friendly – but Charlotte Harris and Hugo Bugg did a tremendous job creating an intimate garden in the circumstances.
I loved the planting, which was soft, colourful yet gentle and with a good mix of textures without any jarring.
I think it perhaps just lacked a little innovation. It was brilliantly executed, but nothing new.
I imagine the hard landscaping picked up innovation points, however, the path surface having been developed using crushed waste aggregate and zero cement, with hidden joints to ensure a smooth finish for spinal patients.
Behind the scenes technical points which are harder for the average viewer to fully appreciate, but which will be brilliant for the end users.
People’s Choice Award: Myeloma UK
Chris Beardshaw’s ‘blocky’ design collected the people’s choice award this year. It’s interesting that comments on my earlier blog didn’t necessarily follow this school of thought. (Admittedly, a somewhat smaller sample size!)
It’s always hard to know if the people’s choice award is more a function of a successful social media campaign than evidence of a genuine most-favoured garden. Yet it almost certainly reflects a very popular garden.
I went to a talk by Chris at one of the Oxford colleges earlier this year and he personally has quite the following of middle-aged ladies! Perhaps his design niche maps well to the average Chelsea goer and voter for the award.
For me, I think my biggest issue with his garden was the extent of obvious manicuring. All Chelsea gardens are deadheaded to within an inch of their lives, but his just looked almost plastic, it was so perfect. No leaf of one plant was allowed to mingle even a millimetre into the foliage of the next plant and my love of nature reacts viscerally to this. Of course, a garden isn’t nature, by definition, but I want a bit of life in the plants, a bit of personality and character and serendipity. An immaculate garden that reads as a simplistic 2D design plan will never press my buttons emotionally, however perfectly executed.
Janna’s Favourite Garden: The Savills Garden
I’m not sure ‘Janna’s Favourite Garden’ counts for anything at all, but it’s possibly the first year I haven’t predicted and agreed with the official Best in Show. Which of course makes my brain want to explore the reasons why.
I did think some of the hard landscaping execution might be marked down. It didn’t affect my enjoyment of the garden, but might have affected the judging. But that didn’t tell me why this garden drew me back more than any other this year.
On Press Day you have the luxury of time and space to really engage with the gardens. Designers will often invite you into the garden itself and there is lots of chattering amongst us Garden Media Guild members and other industry figures as to what we think and what we’ve heard.
All of this is before the judging outcomes are known, and I think it significantly guides my own day one conclusions. In addition, you can’t help but be influenced by those gardens with a general buzz about them – on Press Day it’s very clear which gardens are attracting the most interest.
I would say Savills was one of the few most buzzy gardens, although much of the buzz came from the Michelin chef and his team foraging, preparing and delivering food to the large table of Chelsea pensioners within the design.
Along with the adorable Mark Gregory, its down-to-earth Yorkshire designer, this garden felt enormously authentic. It looked like a real garden, with climbers on the walls, vegetables in the beds and herbs in pots and for me this was hugely refreshing for Chelsea. With the Pensioners on site, it felt like it was truly giving back to society, far far from the idea of an ego-led vanity project.
It felt like a space for the good life – of growing at home and enjoying the fruits of those labours. Emotion is everything for me in a garden.
The Industry Favourite?: The Nurture Landscapes Garden
We’ve explored three ‘bests’ already. And yet my sense is the real ‘winner’ was a fourth garden: Sarah Price’s.
Sarah’s garden of Benton Irises was quite the masterpiece. Sarah’s work always feels unique and thoughtful; pushing the boundaries of garden design to the next level.
I loved the complexity of the planting – a really broad palette of plants contrasting bold evergreen trees with the most delicate flowering specimens.
This was the garden that seemed to take Instagram by storm. It was the garden that designers, professionals and professional followers of design effused over. It was the one people talked of as their favourite garden ever.
For me, there were exquisite pockets that I could have gazed at all day. The little pool of water reflecting twinkling white flowers was absolutely to die for.
But there were also pockets that jolted me out of this deeply contented state. I wrote before about some of the irises being the exact colour of dead, rotting petals. Obviously for many, this didn’t concern them, but there were patches of just too much of this colour for me.
And whilst I liked the variability in planting density, I found the pathways a bit overpowering – just too much bare, hard ground overall. Add to this the brick pillars, which looked a little ‘new-build’ in an otherwise oldie-worldie, faded design and there were enough elements to mean I couldn’t quite ‘get lost’ in this garden.
My gut feel is that Sarah was my favourite designer there – the most sophisticated, skilful and innovative of them all. She also just happens to be a very sweet, modest lady!
I wondered why I was at odds with other designers though, in terms of my overall favourite.
I guess it primarily comes down to a bit of subjective personal preference. We all have things that just do or don’t work for us. I’m not a brown person. I’ve always felt funny wearing brown; goodness knows why!
And add to that the pull of Mark Gregory’s ‘real’ garden: a space you could imagine at home, a space that produces and nourishes and perhaps those two factors alone – brownness and nourishingness – were enough to tip me in Mark’s direction this time.
If I look at the photos I collated to add to this post, it really says it all. I put all the photos I had of the four gardens together and then filtered them down until I couldn’t bear to remove any more. The numbers I ended up with, using that method was as follows:
Chris Beardshaw 3
Horatio’s 8
Sarah Price 10
Mark Gregory 11
Sometimes, numbers speak a thousand words: Chris Beardshaw’s didn’t really get off the starting blocks; Horatio’s I really liked, but it didn’t quite pull at my heartstrings; Sarah’s I adored parts of, but the brownness meant Mark’s nourishing garden just pipped it to the post.
Next year, perhaps I’ll do away with the deep soul-searching and simply add up my photos and draw my conclusions!
