Exhibitors
Sunflower Street Gardens
Capel Manor College
Garden of Night
Designers: Fiona Cazaly, Jennie Gray & Gill Dibben
Sponsors: City & Guilds, Thompson & Morgan
Contractor: Staff & students of Capel Manor
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Garden of Night, a mysterious, elegant and modern design, aims to turn heads at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. The theme of the planting is black; glossy petals reflect the light, while other plants absorb light into their rippled foliage. Chartreuse green accents lift and emphasise the soft planting swathes.
The garden is far from gloomy. It seizes the senses with the unmistakeable, heady scent of the new black hyacinth ‘Midnight Mystique’, elevated on limestone-filled wire gabions to add height and textural interest and softened with vertical planting. Water moves gently through curved rills, and a boat-like bench nestles in partial privacy from the road, with a Cercis canandensis ‘Forest Pansy’ offering welcome shade. Majestic black-stemmed bamboo forms the side boundaries and brings sound to the garden. Natural stone pebbles form a broad sweeping path that makes its way towards the front door, and recessed floor lighting adds drama at night.
Capel Manor’s emblem Fritillaria meleagris is represented in the garden in the form of a privately commissioned steel sculpture, creating a charming focal point.