But will this swath of new designers cut it? Are they too “green”? One of them
graduated from design school only last year. Ironically, perhaps, most of
the newbies are playing it relatively safely, creating naturalistic gardens
with romantic appeal and a strong structure, the kind of thing we have seen
a lot of at Chelsea in the past decade. You can’t really blame them, given
the amount of sponsors’ money an ambitious Chelsea show garden eats up
nowadays – stratospheric amounts in some cases. Therefore it falls to the
old-stagers – who as well as finding themselves in the minority also have to
put up with such things as being described as “old-stagers” – to take some
risks.
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Cleve West won best show garden in 2011 and 2012, and can generally be relied
upon to avoid clichés. His garden for M G (MA15) is an
Islamic-inflected paradise garden focused on an octagonal terrace in pale
limestone with a futuristic fountainhead – it looks like something you might
find inside the Tardis. Four rills (narrow canals) provide the water, while
a quartet of zelkova trees shade corner beds that are richly planted with
perennials – as they must be for any Chelsea garden to stand a chance of a
gold medal. The design is laterally aligned, in that it is intended to be
viewed primarily from one, long side of the rectangular plot. It’s a
strategy used by several experienced Chelsea designers this year, again
perhaps to ring the changes, and it leads to a more open aspect to a number
of the designs. This year there will be a more meadow-like flavour on Main
Avenue.
Islamic-inspired: Martin Cleve in his paradise garden (MARTIN POPE)
Another dramatic structural trend for 2014 is the absence from nearly all
gardens, including M G’s and the Telegraph’s, of a pavilion or
shelter – something I have dubbed a “super-shack” in the past, since this
structure usually bears little resemblance to anything in the real world and
always unbalances the design by being too large for the space. (Often it is
there mainly to provide storage for the sponsors’ champagne.)
“Shack-at-the-back” syndrome is now in decline, it seems, which will make
for better gardens.
Proudly shack-less: the Telegraph garden
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Luciano Giubbilei’s garden for Laurent-Perrier (MA18) reflects the designer’s
new-found interest in a more naturalistic, English planting style – he has
been working recently with Fergus Garrett at Great Dixter. Chelsea designers
have been playing “adopt your own umbellifer” in recent years (hence Ammi
majus’s meteoric rise), and for Giubbilei it is Orlaya grandiflora, or
white-lace flower, that provides a visual link between two meadow areas. The
garden has a strongly geometric ground plan and features modernist
terracing, a pool and associated rill, all inspired by the work of the
Italian master Carlo Scarpa. The garden feels more modern than Giubbilei’s
other Chelsea gardens to date, which have occasionally betrayed a certain
opulent vacuity. This feels much more daring and interesting, with concrete
walls covered in patinated metal panels.
Scarpa has also been a reference point for del Buono Gazerwitz, whose garden
for The Telegraph (MA17) draws on modernism but with a softer, more
traditional feel than Giubbilei’s, featuring low domes of box and romantic
perennial plantings. Indeed, the potential issue of sameyness rears its head
again this year because yet another of the more experienced design teams at
Chelsea this year, Wilson McWilliam Studio, has designed a
“modernist-structure-with-romantic-planting” garden, featuring rectangles of
planting and a formal rill, for the sponsor Cloudy Bay (MA3). But there is a
rougher, more organic feel here, courtesy of the massive slivers of charred
oak – apparently exuding a scent redolent of pinot noir – that line the
space. Up-and-coming Matthew Childs has been selected by the sponsor Brewin
Dolphin (MA19) for his Main Avenue debut, and his design also features the
safe rills’n’rectangles formula, although the two patinated copper arches
that punctuate a zigzag path through lush planting are sure to lend the
garden individuality.
The Cloudy Bay garden has a ‘rougher, more organic feel’ (MARTIN POPE)
The planting of Chelsea gardens can be properly assessed only on the first
morning of the show, partly because so many designers make up the planting
scheme as they go along, regardless of pre-publicity plant lists. Bricks and
mortar (or white marble and glass panelling) is another matter.
The most exciting garden at Chelsea, structurally speaking, is Hugo Bugg’s for
the Royal Bank of Canada (MA13). Bugg (26) is one of the fastest-rising
stars in garden design, and his design incorporates concrete-lined raised
beds in strikingly modern forms, and a rusted Corten steel walkway. All this
hovers above an iris-planted sunken “rain garden” of filtration beds.
Other young designers to watch this year are the Welsh brothers Harry and
David Rich (aged 26 and 23), who have made a rural stargazing garden for
Bord na Móna (RHW1), featuring what they hope will be a stellar mix of
traditional stone walling with more modern artefacts that trace the shapes
of the constellations.
Brothers Harry and David Rich have created a stargazing garden (MARTIN
POPE)
The naturalistic feel continues across the majority of show gardens, whatever
the theme. It is there in Adam Frost’s rustic family garden for Homebase
(MA20), which features a natural pool and heather-clad gazebo, and it
provides the basis for the Nicole Fischer and Daniel Auderset’s Extending
Space (MA7), their first show garden anywhere (who would have thought the
RHS would ever sanction that?) , which “explores the spatial experience
found in the forest edge”. Patrick Collins is an old hand – that rare bird
this year – and his garden themed on the work of the St George’s Hospital
neonatal unit, First Touch (RGB10), is based on the concept of a meandering
stream shaded by trees. There is a special intensity to this design, as
Collins’s own daughter spent the first four months of her life being cared
for in this unit.
Charlotte Rowe is an established designer trying her hand on Main Avenue for
the first time, with a garden on the theme of No Man’s Land for ABF The
Soldiers’ Charity (MA21). There is a positively wild feel to this garden
space, which reflects how the battle scars of the chalky downlands of the
Somme have healed.
No Man’s Land: Charlotte Rowe in her garden for ABF The Soldiers’ Charity
(MARTIN POPE)
Equally green and pleasant is the garden created by Matt Keightley (yet
another Chelsea first-timer) for Help for Heroes (RHW8). But here the
greenery is deceptive. One can sense why the charity chose this design from
a relatively unknown designer. Keightley’s brother served four tours of duty
in Afghanistan, and he has been the inspiration for the garden (no doubt to
his embarrassment), which features an avenue of hornbeams and solid granite,
rough-hewn cubes that represent the soldiers’ physical state, while the
planting suggests their psychological wellbeing (or otherwise).
Chelsea is awash with trite corporate symbolism , but there is an authenticity
to this design born of personal experience (as with Collins’s garden), which
could make it as powerful and memorable as the South Korean DMZ
(demilitarised zone) garden was a few years ago.
Two strong strands in Chelsea’s main show-garden arena over the past decades
have been historic gardens and exotically themed gardens. Perhaps it is
indicative of the changes at the RHS that this year these themes are each
represented by a single garden. Paul Hervey-Brookes fills the historic slot
with an Italian Renaissance-inspired garden for BrandAlley (MA16), promising
fountains and water tricks, green-walled rooms and an arcaded pavilion. The
“foreign” garden is a Cape Cod-themed sand-dune extravaganza for the
Massachusetts Office of Travel Tourism (RHW4), designed by Catherine
MacDonald and Susannah Hunter. It features a raised wooden artist’s retreat
and an intriguing planting mix that reflects the coastline flora
(Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, anyone?).
‘Sand-dune extravaganza’: the Massachusetts garden (MARTIN POPE)
Another Chelsea staple is the town-council garden, and Stoke-on-Trent returns
this year with Positively Stoke-on-Trent (PR3) – which is perhaps slightly
desperately titled (why do we have to be encouraged to be positive about
Stoke?).
Finally there is Alan Titchmarsh’s effort on behalf of RHS Britain in Bloom
(have you noticed how the RHS has added its name to it?), which is not
eligible for judging. From the Moors to the Sea (MA2) proposes to present
precisely that: a range of planting styles suitable for everything from
moorland to coastal regions. With scarcely any “hard landscaping”, this
garden is all about the plants – which will please a good proportion of
Chelsea visitors, for sure.
Read all our coverage of the 2014
Chelsea Flower Show
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