Chelsea goes green
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show has gone green. Not just in the sense of recycling and reusing, but also in planting schemes. While blue and purple flowers have dominated the Show Gardens the past few years, this year the Main Avenue is awash with shades of green.
Designers this year have made lush foliage a feature, with strong lines of hedges, tall palms and sculptured Buxus.
Tom Stuart-Smith’s Laurent-Perrier Garden is dominated by nine 30 year old hornbeams, under-planted with rodgersias, epimediums, hostas and astrantias. Next door to him is Andy Sturgeon’s Cancer Research UK Garden, again making a feature out of foliage with a woodland themed garden with tree ferns, beech trees, euphorbia and astelias.
Crowd favourite, Diarmuid Gavin, has created a green haven for The Oceanico Group with giant white metal and mesh daisies hovering over a mass planting of ferns, sculptured box, bamboos, grasses, rosemary and thyme.
The Daily Telegraph Garden is always popular with visitors. This year Arabella Lennox-Boyd has created a simple, yet striking, garden with a large rectangular pool leading the eye down to a stand of bamboo and Cornus under-planted with white and silver plants including aquilegias, astrantias and arum lilies.
However, flower lovers’ will not be disappointed, with gardens such as The QVC Garden, brimming with all our traditional Show favourites including lupins, irises and foxgloves.
A real crowd pleaser this year is bound to be the colourful George Harrison inspired garden: From Life to Life, A Garden for George. A psychedelic mosaic path leads through the colourful herbaceous planting up to marbled terrace. Damon Hill is driving Ringo Starr in George Harrison’s mini to the garden on Monday for the ‘official’ opening.