It is always a joy to attend the Chelsea Flower Show. This year’s show was no exception. It was a delight in every way with stunning display gardens and immaculate plant exhibits and a stunning array of garden sculpture and quirky decorative accessories.
There were fewer main display gardens than in previous years – eight compared to 15 or more in the past – but that did not diminish the quality. Attention to detail was just as excellent as ever.
In the great pavilion, we again found astonishing displays of specific groups of plants – narcissus, streptocarpus, chrysanthemums, potatoes, sweetpeas, miniature hostas, roses, clematis, delphiniums and on and on.
Here’s a look at the best main display gardens as well as some of the smaller supporting gardens.
Right at the start – at the entrance to the Chelsea Show – we found this amazing gateway beautifully decorated with flowers. It was hard to keep walking. We all had to stop and take photos.
The Anneka Rice Colour Cutting Garden. This has amazing bright jewel-like lupins and contained all sorts of flowers ideal for cutting. These were all picked by Sarah Raven.
The Zoe Ball Listening Garden. Recreating the feeling when you stand too close to a speaker stack at a concert with music vibrating through troughs of corten steel.
The Chris Evans Taste Garden: Designed to celebrate the tastiest plants grown by home and allotment gardeners.
Jo Whiley Scent Garden, designed to evoke woodland walks, rain falling on warm paving, freshly turned earth, new growth and cut flowers.
The Jeremy Vine Texture Garden designed to be immersive and tactile, featuring bold geometric forms juxtaposed with a soft, elegant planting palette.
Emma Stothard Sculpture. Pigs and horses made out of wire and placed in the garden for an unusual and quirky accent.
Silk Road Garden, Chengdu China. This garden featured peonies and primulas and multi-stemed Viburnum Pragense and bushy Euonymus alatus. The pink curves are supposed to represent mountains and the flat areas plains.
Breaking Ground, The Morgan Stanley garden, inspired by bold ambition for a new bursary campaign at Wellington College. The metal structures are supposed to symbolize the idea that walls have been removed to make private education available to more people
The Welcome to Yorkshire Garden, inspired by the Yorkshire coastline with its rugged beauty and natural flowers. The design is apparently evocative of Whitby Abbey and the beach under Flamborough Head.
The M&G Garden explored the different ecologies and native plants of Malta’s arid climate from clifftop to maquis to shrub-land – set in the extreme man-made space of a Maltese stone quarry. It features rare native plants including Euphorbia melitensis and Limonium melitense.
RSH Greening Grey Britain display purple hazel and salvia and sambucus. This should have won a top prize, perhaps even a gold medal, but was not eligible for judging so the designers went home empty-handed but with the applause of the crowds for excellent plant combinations in a mainly purple, white and green scheme.
Royal Bank of Canada Garden. You can see famous British gardening guru Carol Klein sitting in this garden that contains a boardwalk across water on to a stone patio and shelter.
500 Years of Covent Garden celebrated its place-name’s illustrious history with a landscape of cobble stones and Yorkshire stone slabs and structures that were emblematic of the arches at Covent Garden. The garden contained nicely shaped Acer campestre, yew and boxwood and a lovely mix of blue salvia and ornamental grasses. Here are some other great garden displays at Chelsea.
