Kelways peony display strikes Gold


For Kelways, Britain’s oldest nursery and long time Chelsea exhibitor with numerous gold medals, this year’s Gold Medal for the peony display in the Floral Marquee was particularly sweet. It was the first in four years for the nursery and the first for Dave Root since he took over two years ago.


Dave started as a manager at Kelways 18 years ago, after completing a degree in horticulture at Bath University. Now he is overseeing great success for the Langport-based nursery, famous for its peonies and bearded irises.


Kelway’s colourful peonies have been admired since Victorian Times


The legendary Peony Valley field at the nursery, recognised as a National Collection by Plant Heritage (formerly the NCCPG), is still the


Knoll Gardens let their grasses do all the work


Dorset’s Knoll Gardens collected its ninth successive Gold Medal for ornamental grasses at the 2010 Chelsea Flower Show. This year’s win is the latest in an unbroken series of Gold Medal’s going back to 2002 for Knoll’s owner, Neil Lucas, and provided a further opportunity for him to shine the spotlight on ornamental grasses, and their place in a sustainable approach to gardening.


The Gold Medal is an auspicious start to a gardening year which will see the completion of new projects at Knoll, including the publication of Neil’s first book, ‘Designing with Ornamental Grasses’.


There’s also Naturalistic Gardening Masterclasses and the September launch of a range of Knoll Gardens’ grasses at Wisley before becoming generally available at select garden centres.


“This is going to be an exciting year for us at Knoll Gardens, and it is wonderful to have been awarded another Chelsea Gold Medal to start the gardening year in style,” said Neil. “Everyone recognises that plant quality is required to win a Gold Medal at Chelsea, but I think they sometimes forget all the


Neil Lucas admits his gold-winning displays are unrehearsed


people that work continuously to maintain that quality. My personal thanks have to go to Ross Humphrey, my Nursery Manager, and Knoll’s team of staff. Their ongoing dedication plays a huge part in our continuing Gold Medal success.”


“Grasses do most of the work themselves,’’ says Neil Lucas. “Just choose the right plant for the right place. All the


centre of attraction in June. It has been admired by hundreds of people since Victorian times, when a temporary station called ‘Peony Valley Halt’ was built every June and passengers stepped down from the London to Penzance train to wander through the lines of flowers, taking in the scent and colour and perhaps buying tins of ‘Peony Valley Talcum Powder’ and beauty products before boarding the train again.


The Kelway family’s direct connection with the nursery ended 60 years ago, after four generations in the business. Now their memorial in the local churchyard has a display of 40 of the most supreme peonies planted above the underground vaults where at least 25 family members are buried, among them James Kelway, whose enormous ‘Peony Bible’ weighing 9kg has been the basis of detective work identifying the historic varieties in Peony Valley.


But this is a nursery that is moving with the times and continuing to win awards, as their display at Chelsea showed with new varieties among the dazzling show of blooms. They will be at RHS Hampton Court Flower Show 6th – 11th July.


deciduous types you cut back in spring: bit of a spring clean, tidy, weed. Then you leave them alone. They work brilliantly in groups, rather than in ones and twos. So if you can, use more of a single variety of plant. Keep it simple. They are really easy-care, and easy to please, as long as the ground is not badly compacted or waterlogged. Most grasses like sunny, open ground. They are very unfussy once they are established.”


One of Knoll Gardens’ specialist ornamental grasses on show at Chelsea


On each of the previous outings the small family business, which specialises in grasses, gained a gold medal. The cold spring, however, which has hobbled plants across Britain, has been doing no favours to Lucas’s


show plants. The native quaking grass (Briza media), which last year came straight off the nursery’s growing fields for the Chelsea stand, had to be moved into a polytunnel over a month ago – all 300 plants of it – and then, three weeks later, into a greenhouse.


Neil Lucas admits his gold-winning displays are unrehearsed. “There is never a plan, certainly not a drawn thing. It is a question of letting the plants do all the work. We turn up, I look at the plants and then I start putting them together. Usually when we arrive, everyone leaves me alone for half an hour while I go through my panic stage.”


Knoll Gardens, Hampreston, Wimborne, Dorset; 01202 873931. www.knollgardens.co.uk


Country Gardener 21


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