Exhibitors
SHOW GARDENS | WATER GARDENS | SMALL GARDENS | CONCEPTUAL GARDENS
INSPIRING SPACES | WINDOWBOXES & HANGING BASKETS
PLANTS | GROWING & SHOWING MARQUEE | MARKET PLACE
Show feature
Anthony Samuelson/The Prudential
The Past is Another Country
Designer: Anthony Samuelson with Daniel Lloyd Morgan, John Camm, Rick & Julie Plant Design, Lorna Mablin, Steve Westwood, Natalie Samuelson
Sponsor: The Prudential in association with Grass Concrete Ltd
Contractor: Grass Concrete Ltd with Bickers Action BS Construction
Click on the image to view a hi-res version
Prudential are proud to be associated with a retirement venture that is at the cutting edge of art, combining an environmental message with an extraordinary example of horticultural creativity.
Anthony Samuelson spent his career and made his money in the film industry. Still only 77, and looking for a new challenge, he designed a roof garden for this year’s Chelsea Flower Show that featured plants in unlikely containers, known to artists as objets trouvés.
Building on the Chelsea theme, Samuelson brings to Hampton Court the ultimate planted found object in the shape of his cherished James Young two door Bentley. It dates from 1966 and was one of only 30 made. “I had a lot of toys in those days,” Samuelson says ruefully. “An E-type, a few Spitfires, the odd Hurricane, a helicopter. This one I loved the best.”
In providing an honourable retirement for “a petrol-guzzling, fume-emitting dinosaur”, Samuelson is making his contributionto today’s ecological debate. Counterpointing the Bentley’s sculptured elegance we see a Grasscrete permeable parking surface from Grass Concrete Ltd. “It’s the water table’s best friend,” he says.