Chelsea Preview
the future
With our backs to
At next week!s Chelsea
O
Flower Show, there! s comfort to be found in familiar
things. Mark Griffiths
selects his highlights
N the Main Avenue, Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust [site number: MA24] has sponsored a garden inspired by Candide.
Created by Thomas Hoblyn, it! s a remarkably apt choice of theme, not just for a financial firm in the current climate, but for the Flower Show as a whole. Voltaire! s 1759 satire ends with Candide telling his absurdly optimistic mentor Dr Pangloss that plans, ambitions and theories go wrong. After many adventures, the lesson he has learnt is that one has to make the best of what one has: ! We must cultivate our garden.! After last year! s worries, exhibitor numbers
have recovered and the sponsors are once more reassuringly blue chip. There is, however, a strong sense of cultivating one! s garden at Chelsea this year, of avoiding risks and grandiose dreams and focusing instead on what we have, know we like, and can do well. The most innovative feature of the show may be this reluctance to innovate. It! s a relief. Truly new departures in garden
Imbued with moving simplicity: Robert Myers! garden of contemplation for Cancer Research UK features single-stemmed birch underplanted with sylvan vegetation
design are rare and shouldn! t be forced. For some Show Garden designers, this
means looking back, to Victorian splendour, for example, or to Pagnol-esque Provence! or, indeed, and unusually for Chelsea, an evocation of Scandinavian forest glade beside a Norwegian fjord. The most striking of
these trips down Memory Lane is the M&G Investments Garden [MA18] designed by Roger Platts. Described as ! a celebration of the traditional! , it! s a superbly executed
Also look out for:
Alpines
The beauty of the Dolomites is imaginatively brought to the show by Dr Francesco
Decembrini and Dr Daniele Zanzi in Lights
and Colours of the Alps [site number: RM8].
A new take on traditional alpine/rock gardens, it incorporates mirrors ! suggesting the high altitudes and intense sunlight and the reflective nature of snow and ice! with alpine species among dolomite rocks. More modestly, in the pavilion, D!Arcy & Everest [GPB4] brings traditional troughs planted with alpine treasures (left).
Bulbs
Avon Bulbs of Somerset [GPG7] has a winning
112 Country Life, May 19, 2010
specimen of middle-class outer-suburban taste between the years 1930 and 1980, com- plete with oak-beamed summer house, rose-entwined pergolas and redbrick curv- ing paths. There! s nothing wrong with the Gerrard! s Cross School (I grew up in it myself); it! s just that I never expected to see it at Chelsea in the 21st century. It! s strange how shocking the recent past can be. But all is not retro this year. A few Modernist designers prove that taking
formula that doesn! t change much from year to year! it always exhibits a wonderful range of perfectly grown bulbs, from tulips to tulbaghias, nectaroscordum to nerine. Bloms [GPE21] brings cut-flower tulips, and Broad-leigh Gardens of Taunton [GPG11] brings a range of bulbs, with a focus on Pacific Coast irises,
camassias, species tulips and anemones. The media circus can be expected to home in on bulb
suppliers H. W. Hyde & Son
[GPG19] at some stage, if its new lily! Lily Allen, no less! is launched by its namesake at the show. And for those of us who haven! t seen enough daffodils (left) this year,
www.countrylife.co.uk
Cancer Research UK; M&G Investments; D!Arcy & Everest; Dreamstime
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