It is difficult to pick a favourite and so instead let me share a few of my favourite images of gardens, and areas of larger gardens, from this year’s Chelsea Flower Show.
Cleve West’s Garden won Best in Show by doing something that felt that little bit different from the other main Show Gardens; I liked the use of topiary, the structure, the contrasting stonework at the back of the garden and the richness of the planting
The shaded area at back of Sarah Price’s garden was my favourite part of her garden; greens and textures beneath the birches felt evocative and surprisingly peaceful
Andy Sturgeon’s vista along the back of his plot shows the lushness of the planting providing the green structure contrasting with the hard landscaping
Joe Swift’s Homebase Garden was finely planted and picked up on what appeared to be this year’s colour scheme of choice - that of orange (exemplified in the Iris ‘Quechee’) - whilst white flowers shone out under the dappled shade of the Prunus mackii ‘Amber Beauty’
Chris Beardshaw’s Furzey Garden stepped outside of the Chelsea comfort zone of blousy perennial planting to give a colourful woodland scene with Rhododendron’s the signature plant
Diarmuid Gavin’s Garden was superbly planted on the ground level, but this was all I could see.....
Tracy Foster’s Welcome to Yorkshire Garden was a skillful example of naturalistic planting in a small space, evocative of Yorkshire - and I’m sure exactly what the sponsor had hoped for -
Willmott Whyte’s APCO Garden translated Italianate formality onto a small space, picking up on the theme of oranges once more.
Finally the DMZ Forbidden Garden by Korean designer Jihae Hwang caught hold of this year’s zeitgeist - naturalistic planting - with skillful aplomb to provide a meaningful look at the power of nature in the context of the Korean conflict
matt haddon gardens (based in East Yorkshire)
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