|
Thursday and Chelsea…now
as you can see I love to take pictures and hope that these show you
what Chelsea is like…it is really something to see and while pictures
show you, being there is where you want to be.
I was really impressed with the gardens this year…they seem to have
gone back to the way gardens should be – and I want to say that this
is my
personal opinion. Everyone who visits Chelsea brings back with them
memories and ideas. Every garden is different and some will please you
more than others..that is the way it should be. Some like hot colours
and bold statements with statues and water features, some like gardens
more subdued and natural…beauty is in the eye of the beholder and
there is always much beauty at Chelsea.
There were quite a few stunning gardens in my book this year…’Garden
From the Desert’ by Christopher Bradley-Hole. Sponsored by Sheikh
Zayed. HMP Leyhill has always been one of my favourites every year.
This garden is put together by prisoners and I think my all time
favourite this year was the ‘Wrong Garden’ by the Daily Telegraph.
This garden was so different with its plantings of reds, blues and
black/purple. The water feature was unique in that the water seemed to
go uphill. The copper cone pots filled with a single specimen of
either Hosta sieboldiana or Cordyline australis ‘Torbay Red’ really
set them off. The whole garden was pulled together with this pink
gravel – I know this sounds weird, but you really have to see the
pictures… The Laurier-Perrier garden was set off so beautifully with 6
fully blooming Cornus kousa var. chinensis. Tom Stuart-Smith was the
designer for this garden. He also did Windsor Castle Garden to mark
HRH Golden Jubilee. He has shown 4 times at Chelsea and won Gold each
time. This also won the best show garden.
Wow, it was wonderful at
Chelsea this year. The courtyard gardens are really taking off, I
think there were 11 this year. The tents were full of gardens,
displays…one that really caught my eye was the Sir Hans Sloane Garden.
Sloane was a physician to three monarchs, President of the Royal
Society in succession to Sir Isaac Newton, President of the College of
Physicians, a scientist, a botanist founder of the British Museum and
he also owned the manor of Chelsea. The garden was split into the New
World Planting and the Old World Planting. His statue sat in the
middle of both. By the way, this was the first time this garden was
entered and it won Gold, by designer Elizabeth Banks Associates.
The wonderful thing about most of these gardens is that they will live
on long after Chelsea is over…including the Sloane Garden.
For the display gardens such as Hillier, here is a bit of trivia.
About 3,000 plants are used, 750 plant labels are written, it takes 12
lorries to transport all the plants to the show, 16 tons of sand,
cement and ballast are used, 1300 concrete blocks are used to raise
the terraces and water features, 4 tons of paving and walling are laid
out, 10 tons of bark chips are used and the garden takes 10 days to
build and only 10 hours to take apart. Can you just imagine just what
happens every year getting Chelsea ready for us…
Trends at the show this
year included…
The use of recycled materials is increasing, biodiversity in the
gardens with more emphasis placed on planting for wildlife, planted
roofs – three gardens featured this, the view towards climate changes
and the kinds of plants we use. Using tropicals in our outdoor
plantings, geometry – often these shapes pull the whole garden
together. The use of Black plants, such as the ‘Wrong Garden’ – they
are unusual and very useful to design in the garden. Low maintenance
herb and salad growing can be incorporated into
even small gardens to make them more productive. Other thoughts from
this
show were on Romance – how our gardens should feel, structures play an
important part in the garden – as with the planted roofs and Alliums
are the top plant for 2003 – watch for more and more of them. Other
top trend plants include arum lily, iris, geranium and viburnum. The
top colour is purple.
Alan Titchmarsh in a show that I watched while there said that there
were 750 plants now extinct worldwide. Nettles were valuable in the
garden for our bug life (just know how to handle them as I speak from
personal experience!). You can see where gardening is going -
thankfully back to nature and natural.
Chelsea trivia 2003…
600 exhibitors, 25 show gardens, 11 chic gardens, 11 courtyard
gardens, 9 city gardens, 7 sunflower street gardens. It takes 800
people 3.5 weeks to build the show, it covers 11 acres, the floral
pavilions cover 13,000 m. 157,000 visitors will attend the show
(this figure is capped).
2004 is the RHS Bicentenary Celebration – so plan on joining us for
next years tour!
|
