Best in Show at Chelsea

Andy Sturgeon's modern Jurassic Garden for the Telegraph won Best in Show at Chelsea last week. His intention for the garden was quite ambitious. He explained "Fundamentally, I was making a simple connection between colossal geological events that shape our planet, vast timescales and man’s relatively fleeting and insignificant time on Earth." He used 17 "bony plates' made of bronze to represent the spine of a stegosaurus. For hardscape, he also used smooth oatmeal-colored limestone, complete with Jurassic fossils for the paths, and contrasted it with ancient boulders quarried from the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset.

To my eye, the garden was a bit visually jarring. Although this garden was beautifully executed, I don't believe it will stand the test of time the way the last two winners, Dan Pearson or Luciano Giubbilei, will. It came across as trendy, but not timeless.

The Husqvarna Garden by Australian designer Charlie Albone, which won a Silver-Gilt award, was one of the few show gardens conceived along traditional formal lines. Perhaps the design erred on the side of being too safe and traditional, but I thought the way the plants were put together was beautiful.

"The Passionate Gardener" Tour May 22-31, 2016

For the last five years, I have been an assistant tour guide on "The Best of English Gardens" tour for my friend Michael Induni's company, Discover Europe. "The Best of English Gardens" is a wonderful tour, but it isn't exclusively a tour of gardens. The itinerary also includes Stonehenge, the city of Bath and two nights in Salisbury to see the local sites including the Magna Carta. I have been working with Michael to create a tour for the more discriminating gardener. I researched gardens from London to the Cotswolds. I wanted to visit classic and historic gardens, but I also tried to include contemporary gardens that illustrate the latest in horticulture and design. I thought spending a longer time in less locations would be a more relaxing way to see gardens, so we removed two nights in Salisbury and added time in the Cotswolds.

I came across a December, 2012 article that Penelope Hobhouse wrote for Gardens Illustrated called "25 of the best English gardens to visit throughout England" and cross-referenced that with Tim Richardson's 2013 book The New English Garden and created a new tour called "The Passionate Gardener" Tour. One garden I had been dying to see was Gina Price's private garden, Pettifers. So I scouted Pettifers and Rousham House last year and loved them both. Pettifers has deservedly gotten a lot of press (the cover of The New English Garden) in the last several years. It is a plants-person's garden with a clean modern design. The grouping of four "flask-shaped yew topiaries" have become nearly as iconic as the former yew waves in Piet Oudolf's garden, Hummelo. Her gardener, Polly, is both delightful and knowledgeable. In landscape garden department, I looked to the Hobhouse article and substituted  Rousham House, a privately owned, intimate garden designed by William Kent for Stourhead, a National Trust Garden with hundreds of visitors. As difficult as it was to exclude Stourhead, the intimacy of Rousham House, with about a dozen visitors when I was there, was hard to beat.

I will lead the tour May 22-31, 2016 which will also include the annual Gardens Illustrated Talk at the Royal Geographic Society in London. In the next several months, I will profile the gardens in more detail but below is a list of the gardens in chronological order of the tour:

The New English Garden by Tim Richardson NEG: Pettifers, Great Dixter, High Grove

  

"25 of the best English gardens to visit throughout England" by garden designer and historian Penelope Hobhouse. GI/PH: Sissinghurst, Great Dixter, Hidcote Manor, Iford Manor, Rousham House

"Best of English Gardens" Tour BEG : Great Dixter, Sissinghurst, Hidcote Manor,

Iford Manor, Barnsley House, Kiftsgate Garden, Chelsea Flower Show, Vann

 

Great Dixter NEG, GI/PH, BEG

Sissinghurst: GI/PH, BEG

Chelsea Flower Show: BEG

RHS Wisley: BEG

Iford Manor: GI/PH, BEG 

Rousham House: GI/PH

Pettifers Garden: NEG

Kiftsgate: BEG

Barnsley House: BEG

Vann: BEG

Luciano Giubbilei's Border at Great Dixter

While we were at Great Dixter, our tour guide, Rachael Dodd, mentioned that she has been collaborating with last year's Best in Show winner, Luciano Giubbilei, on a trial border in the vegetable garden at Great Dixter. Giubbilei, an Italian, had designed gardens for clients that reflected his heritage and were comprised primarily of hardscape and clipped hornbeam, yew, boxwood and beech. After he created his 2011 Chelsea garden, he wanted to get a greater understanding of the herbaceous elements of garden design. Fergus Garrett invited him to have 'residency' at Great Dixter and gave him a small plot where Giubbilei can get his hands dirty and experiment with planting techniques and combinations. James Horner, also a former Christopher Lloyd scholar worked with him on his Chelsea Flower Show winning garden.

Euphorbias were a main feature of the garden in May

Cow's parsley was another feature

The garden will also have another peak in autumn when the tall Eupatorium are in bloom.

Rachael Dodd gave a tour that was delightful and informative. Rachael was a former Christopher Lloyd scholar and has continued on at Great Dixter. Fergus Garrett must be doing something right to attract such enthusiastic and knowledgeable students and staff.

Luciano Giubbilei's Gold Medal winning garden at the 2014 Chelsea Flower Show. This planting was a result of his collaboration with Dixter-trained James Horner who worked with Giubbilei, overseen by Fergus Garrett, on in his border at Great Dixter.

Chesea Then and New

Marcus Barnett's design for The Telegraph used a successful formula for design that it reminiscent of many recent Chelsea gardens: a modern patio with a clean stone/hedge backdrop, clipped blocks of yew and beech, elegantly limbed up trees and the ubiquitous low wildish herbaceous planting mixing flowers and grasses. In another year, it could have easily won Best in Show but this year, Dan Pearson offered something completely different.

Dan Pearson's design sponsored by Laurent-Perrier was very wild and intricately planted. It was inspired by the Trout Stream at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. In fact, soapstone boulders from the estate were transported to Chelsea to form the hardscape of the garden. The complexity and details of the planting boggled the mind.  My main criticism of the garden was that it was a three-sided island garden which made photography difficult without having spectators and/or buldings in the backround. It also made the fantasy that transports one to another place and time impossible. That said, the triangular shape allowed veiwing the complexity of the plantings easier. The edges of the garden which were inches away looked as if they had been there for hundreds of years.

The Best of English Gardens 2015

I am pleased to announce that I will be returning to the UK this year to help lead a tour of English gardens May 12-21. I will be giving a North American perspective on how to incorporate ideas from the English gardening to members of the tour; a sort of 'color commentator' to compliment the excellent English tour guide. We will be visiting Great Dixter, Hidcote, Sissinghurst, Stourhead and Wisley among other gardens and attractions. The tour ends with The Chelsea Flower Show in London.

You can see the complete itinerary at The Best of English Gardens, 2015.  Discover Europe offers a  wide range of tours throughout Europe. For more information, see their website.

 The 2014 Best in Show Garden by Luciano Giubbilei

The Cottage Garden at Sissinghurst, the garden of poet/novelist Vita Sackville-West and her husband, historian Harold Nicolson

The Long Border at Great Dixter, the home and garden of the late plantsman, Christopher Lloyd, now run by his Head Gardener, Fergus Garrett.

An elegant lawn at Monttisfont Abbey

The Temple of Apollo through the trees at Stourhead Garden

A beautiful garden path at Kiftsgate Court Gardens

 One of the many focal points in a garden room at Hidcote Manor

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.