News
Trends emerging at Chelsea 2005
The highlight of the gardening year, Chelsea Flower Show, sets the trends for the gardening world. Although the RHS has never prescribed a particular theme for the show, directional trends often emerge. Examples at this year’s show include:
Pick of the crop
Reflecting society’s current enthusiasm for healthy eating and desire for fresh, flavoursome fruit and vegetables, vegetable patches and fruit trees feature heavily. Using nutritious vegetables that fed the nation, The Chelsea Pensioners are growing their vegetable patch for ‘The Chelsea Pensioners Garden’ working entirely from a 1939 catalogue. Also highlighting that we care about what we eat is ‘The Fetzer Garden’, which includes a vegetable plot where carrots, beet, chard, leeks and cauliflower will grow.
In the Great Pavilion Jekka McVicar is set to urge people to grow their own salad bag and Chef Raymond Blanc and Newington Nurseries aim to tempt us with a display of ‘exotic edibles’ from Malaysia, all of which can be grown in the UK. In the Lifelong Learning area Henry Doubleday Research Association’s (HDRA) exhibit illustrates its ‘Organic Food for All’ campaign, which is a mentor-led programme aimed at enabling people on low incomes to grow their own fruit and vegetables.
Glass and photography
There is extensive use of glass and mirrors within many of the gardens and, for the first time at Chelsea, two of the small gardens provide settings for outdoor galleries.
‘The Gallery Outside’ uses photography and glass to provide an alternative setting for an outdoor private photography gallery. Black and white photographs, representing examples of the portrait photography of Patrick Lichfield, are mounted on walls in back-lit glass panels. In the main planting bed a photograph is lit up between two glass panels.
‘Room 105’ is an interactive outdoor gallery space. Inspired by the power, impact and message that visual imagery, in particular black and white photography can portray, the garden allows for internal contemplation.
‘The Lalique Garden’ features panels of crystal glass by Lalique Ltd, the esteemed French crystal manufacturer and jeweller and the ‘Crystal Cobweb Garden includes an ornamental fence, with crystals evenly spaced on tensile wire. This creates the dew effect and glistens when the sun hits it, which is echoed in glass sculptures and structural planting which holds the dew on foliage.
War and peace
As the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the Second World War, this year sees ‘war and peace’ as another central theme within a number of gardens and exhibits. Designed by Julian Dowle, ‘The Chelsea Pensioners Garden’ is a nostalgic vision of ‘Blighty’. Chelsea Pensioners, who live at The Royal Hospital and fought in this war, contributed ideas for the garden, which will recreate a soldier’s dream of home. Children from Oak Lodge Special Secondary School selected peace as the theme for their chic garden, ‘Peace is Special’. Another garden that embraces war and peace is Sir Terence Conran’s ‘Commemorative Peace Garden’, for the Imperial War Museum. The planting, which includes many trees and flowers that are symbolic to war, peace and remembrance, is white throughout with a scattering of scarlet poppies. Growing amongst these will be a specially commissioned new rose, ‘Remember’, which will be launched at Chelsea.
Wildlife, biodiversity and recycling
With Ellen Landscapes showcasing Chelsea’s first natural swimming pond, an old Land Rover forming the base of a courtyard garden and an unprecedented number of displays including homes for animals, green initiatives are both imaginative and inspirational this year.
From Writtle College’s Lifelong Learning exhibit, which shows how edible, easy to grow, plants make an attractive and functional wildlife garden, to ‘Wildlife Trusts Lush Garden’, where reed beds and nest boxes are just some of the features that provide shelter for animals, displays across the show highlight that a garden doesn’t have to be wild to be attractive to wildlife.
Amongst other displays and gardens, ‘The Real Rubbish Garden’ and Chris Beardshaw’s ‘Trail-finders Recycled Garden’ exhibit are set to provide visitors at Chelsea with a variety of recycling revelations to take home with them.
Home work
With remote and flexible working on the rise, a number of gardens this year offer ways to be inspired and productive within, or connected to, the garden.
Wireless connectivity and a custom-built ‘work pod’ allows the ‘Microsoft SoGo Garden’ to be used as a micro office, where vividly contrasting plants stimulate the working environment. ‘The Merrill Lynch Garden’ is designed to be a workplace that is an extension of a home; an office with a glass front makes a seamless connection with the garden.
Plant trends
Chelsea is the premier event for growers to unveil their new plants to the public. The Great Pavilion, packed with millions of blooms at the peak of perfection, houses every imaginable type of plant. Planting schemes reflect the global diversity of the horticultural world, with plants to be found from every continent.
Kim Wilde, co-designer of ‘The Cumbrian Fellside Garden’ tips, Linaria purpurea as the next ‘must have’ plant as a drought resistant, long flowering self-seeder that rivals Verbena bonariensis.
Alan Sargent, designer of ‘The Bradstone Spring Garden’ believes the ‘next big thing’ will be small vegetable plots, with gardeners becoming more interested in growing their own food throughout the year.
Roses are proving popular this year, with David Austin Roses launching six new roses, including a pure rich pink, Rosa 'Alan Titchmarsh'. Pockocks Roses is unveiling a new cultivar that has been named after celebrity chef Rick Stein and Peter Beales Roses will launch an apricot shrub rose, Rosa 'Gardener’s Joy'.
Irises continue to be fashionable and a new cultivar to look out for is Iris ‘Broadleigh Penny’, which will be launched at Broadleigh Garden’s display. Cayeux Iris, a new exhibitor from France, believes its exhibit ‘Iris - Goddess of The Rainbow’ will illustrate both the drama and the subtlety that combinations of different irises can offer.
Another key plant is Zantedeschia - illustrated on the show posters and leaflets. These have suddenly become more popular in the last couple of years, with breeding work to enhance colours of both pot plants and cut flowers continuing.
Colour is either toned down in pastels and neutrals, or boldly contrasting, building on the recent vogue for using ‘black plants’. New cultivars in The International Black Plant Society’s ‘Anything Goes with Black’ display include Heuchera ‘Licorice’ and Hyacinthus ‘Midnight Mystique’.
‘The Lalique Garden’ includes Actaea simplex ‘Black Negligee’, Tulipa ‘Black Parrot’ and Tulipa ‘Queen of Night’. In the ‘Roald Dahl Foundation Chocolate Garden’ there are many chocolate coloured plants, including some with a chocolate scent.