Exhibitors
Show gardens
Laurent Perrier
The Laurent Perrier Garden - Trentham Awakes
Designer: Tom Stuart-Smith
Sponsor: Laurent Perrier
Contractor: Crocus
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The garden celebrates the revival of Trentham in North Staffordshire. Previously the home of the Dukes of Sutherland, it became one of the great gardens of the mid 19th century after it was remodelled by Charles Barry from the late 1830’s. The house was demolished in the early 20th century and the gardens gradually declined. But the structure of Barry’s great Italian garden remains and is now to be restored. The garden is being recast by Piet Oudolf and Tom Stuart-Smith and the garden at Chelsea is intended to capture some of the character of the place and the proposed planting in the first phase of replanting being carried out by Tom Stuart-Smith in 2004-5.
The Chelsea garden, like the proposed garden at Trentham is a mix of classicism and modernity. The raised arcade along one side of the garden will be of Carpinus betulus 'Pendula' and is formed in the proportions of Trentham’s famous trellis walk, an iron pergola which runs along one side of the Italian garden and overlooks the 10 acre parterre. In the Chelsea garden it overlooks a broad expanse of perennial planting, which is divided by a series of narrow canals. These refer to the dominant presence of water at Trentham: the huge fountains in the Italian garden, the 80 acre lake laid out by Capability Brown, and the River Trent that runs through the garden.
The arbour of weeping hornbeam, leads to a statue of the goddess Hygiea, the Goddess of health and daughter of Aesculapias. The Statue is from Trentham and is probably the work of Antonio Sola, a Catalonian sculptor working in the mid 19th century and known to have worked for the second Duke. The head and fingers have recently been recarved by Cliveden Conservation and the statue will return to Trentham after the show.
The large classical urns are based on those originally at Trentham and after the show will be installed in the Upper Flower Garden (recently replanted). At the back of the garden is a curved stone seat, derived from a larger structure at Trentham. This is backed by Italianate planting including Cupressus sempervirens and Osmanthus heterophyllus.
The following describes the planting at Trentham, which is relevant to the planting in the Chelsea garden. The recasting of the Lower Flower Garden - the main terrace of Sir Charles Barry's Italian garden is deliberately subversive. Barry's concept is masterful in its creation of a grand formal landscape that has few equals in Britain, expressing all the confidence and power of the empire at its zenith. But from today's perspective the design can seem like an act of obsessive control. Nature is subdued and distant. The visitor is kept at least 9m (30ft) from the nearest flower. All is symmetry - to be admired but not touched.
The proposed replanting changes this. The original structure of the garden - paths, banks, balustrades and formal clipped evergreens is retained - but the proportion of the garden that is planted is more than tripled. The new planting is made up of interweaving drifts of herbaceous perennials, creating a pointillist, asymmetrical and subtle effect; a far cry from the bright blocks of coloured bedding and shrubs that filled the beds in the 19th century.
New ramps are introduced, leading down into the sunken areas around the fountain basins so that the visitor can move through the plantings and sit on the edge of the fountains. At this lower level the planting is more characteristic of a meadow, using drifts of taller perennials, many of which will be left standing into late winter. Rivers of grass will run through the planting, an accurate translation of the pattern of the River Trent and its tributaries that spread like a continuous, organic net over the Midlands. The river is the reason for the existence of Trentham, the name, the place and the garden. The river of grass points to the resurgence of the Trent as a natural force (now brimming with fish) and is symbolic of the free and organic pattern of design adopted in contrast to the preceding Victorian order.
The grassy rivers will be repeated at Chelsea. A framework of Miscanthus divides up the other perennial groupings and provides a contrast of texture. However, these are envisaged as a feature of the planting that would be more prominent in late summer through to the end of winter and so not especially legible as 'rivers' at the end of May.
The hornbeam tunnel is underplanted with shade tolerant hostas, grasses and violas. In the tunnel there are a series of four carved panels set in to the side wall of the garden and embowered by the leafy branches. These are made by stone carver Gary Breeze and evoke the lost landscapes of Trentham that have been buried or obscured since the end of the 17th century and the new landscape that is now emerging.