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| Chelsea flower show: austere elements and an Australian ray of light | Chelsea flower show: austere elements and an Australian ray of light |
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| Perhaps we should blame the unseasonal chill in the air, but this year's Chelsea flower show seems strangely subdued. Despite the jollity of the unbanned gnomes and the celebrity-spangled glamour of Monday's press day ("there's Helen Mirren in a lily-of-the-valley print skirt! Look, it's Ringo Starr and his wife!"), it's a struggle to find a show garden that raises the hairs on the back of the neck, a real showstopper. | Perhaps we should blame the unseasonal chill in the air, but this year's Chelsea flower show seems strangely subdued. Despite the jollity of the unbanned gnomes and the celebrity-spangled glamour of Monday's press day ("there's Helen Mirren in a lily-of-the-valley print skirt! Look, it's Ringo Starr and his wife!"), it's a struggle to find a show garden that raises the hairs on the back of the neck, a real showstopper. |
| Adding to this sense were a number of lifeless or charred trees, from the dead trees in Jo Thompson's Stop the Spread garden, passing on a message about the threat of disease and invasive pests to native trees, to the charred oak backdrop of Christopher Bradley Hole's Telegraph garden and the fire-damaged trees of James Basson's After the Fire garden for Cancer Research UK. | Adding to this sense were a number of lifeless or charred trees, from the dead trees in Jo Thompson's Stop the Spread garden, passing on a message about the threat of disease and invasive pests to native trees, to the charred oak backdrop of Christopher Bradley Hole's Telegraph garden and the fire-damaged trees of James Basson's After the Fire garden for Cancer Research UK. |
| Another garden with deliberately austere elements, including a brown structure at its centre, is Jinny Blom's B&Q Sentebale Forget-me-not garden, which has drawn attention partly because of Prince Harry's involvement – it's for the charity, Sentebale, which he co-founded and which helps vulnerable children in Lesotho. Part of its aim is to illustrate loss and fragility. | Another garden with deliberately austere elements, including a brown structure at its centre, is Jinny Blom's B&Q Sentebale Forget-me-not garden, which has drawn attention partly because of Prince Harry's involvement – it's for the charity, Sentebale, which he co-founded and which helps vulnerable children in Lesotho. Part of its aim is to illustrate loss and fragility. |
| In the great pavilion, though, it is business as usual: one imagines that the heady sprays of roses and ranks of lupins look much the same as they did at the first Chelsea 100 years ago. And, as in 1913, plant hunters still travel to far-flung parts of the world to discover new morsels for gardeners to collect. | In the great pavilion, though, it is business as usual: one imagines that the heady sprays of roses and ranks of lupins look much the same as they did at the first Chelsea 100 years ago. And, as in 1913, plant hunters still travel to far-flung parts of the world to discover new morsels for gardeners to collect. |
| The evidence is here, among the exotic spots and stripes of the exhibits on the Crûg Farm Plants stand run by Bleddyn and Sue Wynn-Jones: they recommend Saxifraga stolonifera, Kinki Purple, collected from the Kinki district of Japan, for ground cover in dry shade, while the black and green stems of Disporum longistylum look as if they've been stripped straight from the pages of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. | |
| The cold spring really has put the dampeners on some of the show gardens, with a sparser display of roses and irises that really could have done with a few weeks of sun to look their best. Perhaps not surprising, then, that one of the star plants of the show is the impossibly blue-bloomed Himalayan poppy, Meconopsis lingholm, a denizen of cool mountainous climes. It shines out of Nigel Dunnett's RBC Blue Water garden and Roger Platts' M&G garden, a gasp-making plant that no one can resist. But perhaps we should: this is no easy plant to grow, unless you happen to have just the right mix of moist soil and cool climes. | The cold spring really has put the dampeners on some of the show gardens, with a sparser display of roses and irises that really could have done with a few weeks of sun to look their best. Perhaps not surprising, then, that one of the star plants of the show is the impossibly blue-bloomed Himalayan poppy, Meconopsis lingholm, a denizen of cool mountainous climes. It shines out of Nigel Dunnett's RBC Blue Water garden and Roger Platts' M&G garden, a gasp-making plant that no one can resist. But perhaps we should: this is no easy plant to grow, unless you happen to have just the right mix of moist soil and cool climes. |
| The show garden that seems happiest in its own skin is that of Adam Frost, who worked with Geoff Hamilton at Barnsdale. Unlike most of the show gardens, the cold has done him a favour, holding back the apple tree blossom in his Homebase modern family garden until just the right moment. Leaning on a broom, exhausted after the strains of a 19-day non-stop garden build, Frost is happy with his work. This garden avoids many of the Chelsea cliches: overemphasis on topiary shapes for structure and frothy mounds of cow parsley, for instance. But its theme, mixing ornamentals and edibles in a beautiful, practical garden, is still bang on trend. | The show garden that seems happiest in its own skin is that of Adam Frost, who worked with Geoff Hamilton at Barnsdale. Unlike most of the show gardens, the cold has done him a favour, holding back the apple tree blossom in his Homebase modern family garden until just the right moment. Leaning on a broom, exhausted after the strains of a 19-day non-stop garden build, Frost is happy with his work. This garden avoids many of the Chelsea cliches: overemphasis on topiary shapes for structure and frothy mounds of cow parsley, for instance. But its theme, mixing ornamentals and edibles in a beautiful, practical garden, is still bang on trend. |
| Another ray of light comes from the ever-ebullient Australians from Fleming's Nursery. They're behind the Trailfinders Australian Garden, tipped by the TV presenter Toby Buckland for best in show. One can see why: Fleming's has announced that this is its final year at Chelsea, so it's going all-out for a gold medal with a design that is ambitious and clever, showing how rainwater can be recycled, featuring a billabong fed by a series of waterfalls. Rising out of the garden is the best structure of the show, a reclaimed timber studio designed to look like the native Australian waratah flower. Thank goodness for the Aussies. | Another ray of light comes from the ever-ebullient Australians from Fleming's Nursery. They're behind the Trailfinders Australian Garden, tipped by the TV presenter Toby Buckland for best in show. One can see why: Fleming's has announced that this is its final year at Chelsea, so it's going all-out for a gold medal with a design that is ambitious and clever, showing how rainwater can be recycled, featuring a billabong fed by a series of waterfalls. Rising out of the garden is the best structure of the show, a reclaimed timber studio designed to look like the native Australian waratah flower. Thank goodness for the Aussies. |
| • This article was amended on 21 May 2013. The original wrongly attributed The Lost World to HG Wells. The author was Arthur Conan Doyle. |