The gardener's eye

The Gardener's Eye

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Chelsea Italian Style

Two of my favorite gardens at the Chelsea Flower Show were the Laurent-Perrier Garden designed by Italian garden maker, Luciano Giubbilei and the Telegraph Garden designed by another Italian designer, Tommaso del Buono and his American partner, Paul Gazerwitz. The Telegraph Garden was inspired by the traditions of the great historic gardens of Italy reinterpreted in a “bold and uncompromising modern design.” Luciano Giubbilei’s garden for Laurent-Perrier was described as a “contemplative design” with a “geometric layout, inviting exploration of stillness and movement through relationships between the contrasting  forms and materials in the garden.”


Telegraph Garden


 Laurent-Perrier Garden

There were many similarities between the two gardens. Both gardens were divided into linear shapes with a central rectangular feature: the Telegraph Garden had a perfect emerald lawn and the Laurent-Perrier Garden had a canal-fed pool. Both central features were calming in their own way. Each garden had walls that combined green hedges with a simple clean panel of stone creating a very contemporary feel to the gardens. The Telegraph Garden relied on a classical symmetrical arrangement of the space while the Laurent-Perrier Garden was asymmetric with the planting beds at opposite corners of the garden space. Both gardens featured the soothing sound of moving water: the Telegraph garden water moved vertically while the Perrier Garden the water moved horizontally.

Both gardens featured clipped mounds: tightly sheared boxwood in the Telegraph Gardena and more loosely clipped beech in the Laurent-Perrier Garden. 


Telegraph Garden


 Laurent-Perrier Garden


Telegraph Garden


 Laurent-Perrier Garden

Finally, both gardens, like many of the Chelsea gardens in the last several years, had low herbaceous beds which contained a mixture of frothy flowering plants and ornamental grasses.



Telegraph Garden


                                                             Laurent-Perrier Garden

I liked the clean modern lines, combined with beautiful plants, which created peaceful spaces in both gardens. Luciano Giubbilei, by not relying on the symmetry of historical Italian gardens, took a greater risk with the design and was rewarded with the Best in Show Award.


2 comments:

  1. My favorite of the Giubbilei Chelsea gardens, though I wonder how it will look after the flowers fade in two weeks. It certainly makes clear that these are temporary show gardens. I love the beech balls.

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  2. I also like the subtly of the shad blows in the Giubbilei garden as compared to the somewhat tortured tilia trees.I think a Dixter-trained gardener helped with the herbaceous planting, which was lovely.

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