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Chris Beardshaw Ltd
The Chris Beardshaw Garden – in association with Buildbase. Celebrating 100 years of Hidcote Manor
Designer: Chris Beardshaw
Sponsor: Chris Beardshaw Ltd in association with Buildbase
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This garden celebrates the centenary of gardening at Hidcote Manor in Gloucestershire, home of its creator Lawrence Johnston.
As the archetypal ‘garden of rooms’, Johnston’s Hidcote set the style for the English garden in the 20th Century. Hidcote was a result of his coherent vision and genius, achieved over a relatively short period of time. The garden became an exposition of garden design and plantsmanship as well as a Mecca for garden lovers. The 2007 centenary celebrations form the launch of a restoration programme at Hidcote, and this garden is vital to these celebrations, as the Hidcote team has to raise £1.6 million in order to complete the restoration programme.
This garden reflects Johnston’s style and is divided into three key areas. The first section displays immense herbaceous borders of vibrant and clashing colours against a backdrop of dark Taxus hedging. This is an area for brave combinations of rich orange with lime green and regal purples. In the next room sits one of Johnston’s famous pavilions of brick and stone, set with exotic pot plants borrowed from Hidcote’s sister garden Serre de la Madone in France. The lawn in front of the pavilion offers a horticultural sorbet between courses and a chance for green foliage to massage the senses. A further line of pleached Carpinus marks the transition into the third section representing the shadier and woodland herbaceous borders. Here the colour spectrum is cooler and blues and yellows dominate.
The exhibit is something of a personal journey for designer Chris Beardshaw. As a boy Hidcote Manor was the first major garden to which he was exposed. During one sun-drenched afternoon in the lavish borders of Johnston’s Hidcote, Chris realised the power of using plants in an orchestrated and deliberate manner. He says: "Hidcote is responsible more than any other garden for directing my career."
Chris Beardshaw says that for him Chelsea means "enticing 5000 plants to sing in tune and in time to create a symphony that you hope the audience recognizes and loves."