Right Trip down Memory Lane: Roger Platts! s suburban M&G Investments Garden. Below Andy Sturgeon! s Daily Telegraph Garden includes a pepper tree

sculptural qualities. Mr Sturgeon has left areas of bare gravel between his islands of vegetation. It! s a brilliant decision and brilliantly done: emptiness is a precious material far too rare in British gardens. On the fringes are a cork oak (Quercus suber) and the gracefully pendulous pepper tree (Schinus molle). Their shade apart, the garden

is filled with sun and warm-hued surfaces, a basking spot for people and plants. Robert Myers! s garden for Cancer

stock isn! t the same as standing still. The result is their best work yet. Andy Sturgeon has created something

that is both exciting and necessary. A gravel garden filled with drought-tolerant plants,

The Daily Telegraph Garden [MA21] is

also an outdoor room, and a small enough space for a town house or the yard of a country dwelling. A series of stone paths and rectangular terraces is separated by sliced steel screens and low walls to reveal varying views of the garden! s compartments. These are filled with plants from Mediterranean-type climates chosen for their intriguing colours and

Walkers Bulbs [GPE2] brings together early, mid- and late-season narcissi, across some 70 varieties, which can be ordered at the show for autumn delivery.

Charities

A Chinook helicopter is the focal point of Birmingham City

Council! s Help for Heroes

garden in the pavilion [GPE8], highlighting the role of the city! s Selly Oak Hospital in aiding the war wounded with a ! peace garden! of aromatic plants and tinkling water. Hall Farm Nursery! s

Riding For the Disabled

[GPD14] celebrates the chari-

www.countrylife.co.uk

ty! s 40th anniversary by ! bringing together a love of plants, horses (left) and the countryside! , featuring a grassy meadow with a wire pony and rider sculpture by Rupert Till.

Carnivorous plants

Sinister protein-hungry plants occupy several pavilion exhibits, including Borneo Exotics [GPB8], with a display of tropical Nepenthes (pitcher plant, right) species, including ! the mon- strously huge Nepenthes truncata that sometimes dines on rats! , plus species approaching extinction in the wild. The

Carnivorous Plant Society [GPE19]

brings a wide variety of fly-eaters, and

Hewitt-Cooper Carnivorous Plants

Research UK [MA22] is a beautifully con- sidered and constructed design, rich in sources and symbolism, and yet still imbued with moving simplicity. A ghostly grove of single-stemmed birch (Betula utilis var. jacquemontii) is underplanted with sylvan vegetation, dark-leaved and white-flowered. Through it wanders a path of sunken granite planks, their ends staggered so that the undergrowth intervenes in places! an ingenious note of naturalism in what is otherwise a very sleek design. As the path recedes, so the stone becomes paler and the planting grows prismatically colourful, the progress towards light and enlighten- ment being the aim of this garden. It expands in a terrace around a circular pool that matches a circle cut overhead in a canopy of cantilevered steel and wood. At the gar- den! s end, a grid of cubic evergreens creates a liv-

ing abstract tableau. This design resurrects

one of the oldest garden types, the garden of con- templation. It! s surrounded by

a cloister, reinvented here as an

arcade of dark timber slats in yin-yang contrast to the white-trunked birch.

[GPD3] creates a ! natural! setting with bark, moss, and moving water.

Exotics

Barbados Horticultural Society [GPF18]

and the island of Grenada [GPD25] display their own brands of tropicana (below) with West Indies flowers, foliage and spices. Indoor Garden Design [GPK7], which specialises in supply and care of plants for office environments, brings high technology to create a calm and leafy oasis in a contemporary workspace.

Kitchen gardening

Pennard Plants [GPF6] revives the old technique known as ! French Gardening!, a term coined in the mid 19th century as a method of gardening to get the maximum

Country Life, May 19, 2010 113

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