Chelsea show garden designs revealed
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Image courtesy Of Garden Museum
With the Chelsea Flower Show only two months away, garden designers and sponsors are busy outlining their plans for this annual festival.
The Gardeners Have All Gone
‘The Gardeners Have All Gone’, Pennard Plants’ garden, with London education and environment charity, Roots and Shoots, focusses on some of the lesser known troops of the Great War - the black soldiers, from this country and the Empire, many of whom found themselves thousands of miles from their homes, in the trenches of France.
The garden will tell two different stories. On one side will be a pristine Edwardian vegetable garden, tended to perfection, not a carrot or leek out of place. The other side will show the old wild order returning with black poppies, Solomon’s seal, bluebells, cowslips, primroses, cow parsley and foxgloves taking over now the gardeners are gone to war.
“All the plants in the vegetable garden have been grown from heritage seeds in Pennard Plants’ Somerset Victorian walled garden. “The ‘weeds’ in the wartime garden have been begged and borrowed from friends and supporters,” explained Director Linda Phillips who founded the charity.
The WellChild Garden
The work of another charity WellChild, and the role gardens play in supporting sick children will be highlighted in The WellChild Garden, sponsored by CQS and 100 Women in Hedge Funds and designed by Olivia Kirk, a previous Chelsea Flower Show gold award winner.
The garden will provide an enclosed central oasis representing the care and support families receive, with five paths, representing the WellChild’s hand-shaped logo, leading off through raised beds, planted to appeal to all five senses.
“I’ve tried my best to bring the work of the charity to life through elements such as a ‘Sensory Wall’ which protectively curves round the garden , but at the same time hiding musical treasures, bringing a sense of fun and magic to the garden,” said the designer.
After Chelsea, the garden will be transported to The Brook Special Primary School on Broadwaters.
The Cloudy Bay Sensory Garden
A sensory garden of a different kind is this year’s Cloudy Bay Sensory Garden created by Andrew Wilson and Gavin McWilliam of Wilson McWilliam Studio, designed to reflect the different sense impressions created by drinking Cloudy Bay wines.
The garden is designed as an urban space, with hints of the Marlborough region terroir. Charred oak panels, referencing wine storage casks, will be used at the rear with shafts of light appearing through the gaps. A paved terrace will create a place to relax with a shallow rill running alongside it and through the garden. Layered planting- low purple and red ornamental grasses with lime and white-flowering perennials, scented woodland groundcover and coppiced hazel – will represent the different notes of the wines, with species selected to reflect taste and perfume and the promise of later fruit - blackcurrant, redcurrant and gooseberry.
50 Years of Britain in Bloom
Meanwhile Suttons Seeds will be celebrating 50 years of Britain in Bloom in the South West with a garden inspired by the region and designed by RHS Gold Medal winner Jon Wheatley, with varieties provided by Suttons Seeds and grown by Terry Porter including a secret new variety deep purple/black in colour. The garden also celebrates the fact that despite the flooding crisis in the area recently, the South West is alive and well and open for business.
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show takes place from May 20th to May 24th, 2014 http://www.rhs.org.uk/Shows-Events/RHS-Chelsea-Flower-Show/2014/