Chelsea Flower Show plantings (1)

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One of my friends was given two complimentary tickets for the Chelsea Flower Show and invited me to go with her. I didn’t need to be asked twice. Rather than take photos of entire gardens, I concentrated on sections of planting to provide ideas and inspiration. I will put these into two blogs as there are a lot of them, and hope they can give you some ideas as well.

M and G Garden – The Retreat. All very feminine (it was done by a woman designer)

Sentabale Garden (the Prince Harry charity). I was a bit disappointed with the planting on this one. It almost looked as if the designer had tried to use too many different plants and too many colours (although my photo doesn’t really show that)

This was the garden designed by the two young brothers. Good mix of plants but impossible to maintain without trampling everything?

This was the Adam Frost garden. A more limited range of plants than many of the other gardens, but still very effective.

This is the Show Garden I really wanted to see as I liked the way it had been done in blocks of colour. For example, one yellow section was doronicums underplanted with euphorbias.

The Time In Between Garden was designed by an Australian and contained the water feature that suddenly emptied. There were also proteas in the planting.

Sean Murray won the recent Chelsea Designer Challenge, shown on TV. He built a front garden that combined planting as well as room for parking, and was deservedly popular. It also contained features such as a bug hotel made from old tin cans.

The Brewin Dolphin had lots of slate surfaces and sculptures and a woodland feel. In five years the slate might be covered in moss and weeds?

Dan Pearson’s Chatworth garden won ‘Best in Show.’ When you saw the attention to detail and planting, you could see why. It looked as if it had been there for years and years.

Finally for this section, two of the smaller gardens. This was one of the conceptual gardens, and featured ‘holes’ of cactus sunk below the level of the water.

While this one reflected the year’s “must have” plants – iris sibirica and orange geums.

To be continued.

• 25 May, 2015
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