Postcard from Hampton Court: Perfect combinations

Achillea 'Anthea' and Leucanthemum x superbum 'Goldrauch'
Barnsdale Gardens, Rutland

Seline armeria, Geranium pratense 'Violaceum', Malva sylvestris 'Zebrina'
The Botanic Nursery, Wiltshire

Achillea 'Fanal' and Salvia nemorosa 'Ostfriesland'
Hardy's Cottage Garden Plants, Hampshire

Heuchera 'Lime Marmalade' and Selaginella apoda
Madrona Nursery, Kent

Cenolophium denudatum, Pilosella aurantiaca, Achillea 'Walther Funcke', and Anemanthele lessoniana
The Landform Garden, designed by Catherine MacDonald (gold, Best Summer Garden)

Postcard from Hampton Court: Of grey roses

I have a little ritual whenever I visit the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show: I visit the Roses and Romance marquee to have a look at the latest Rose of the Year.

I'm secretly in love with roses: I keep trying to give up growing them, as they're far too romantical-like for my wellies-and-wasabi mental picture of myself as a gardener. But they keep wriggling back in somehow. I'm currently hatching a plan to sneak more in under the guise of being species roses, therefore having hips which are officially Useful.

Anyway: this year, it's 'You're Beautiful', bred by Graham Fryer: pic above. Very pink, very classic, rather handsome in a Barbara Cartland sort of way: this shade of candy pink isn't quite my thing but I could see why it won.

However: while I was there I began to notice there is an ominous trend which is creeping into the rosey world. They've started breeding grey roses.
 

This is 'Grey Dawn': it's the colour of faded curtains, or the dresses in BBC costume dramas, or maybe the papery skin of old ladies. This picture makes it look quite nice, but believe me, it's grey.

I blame the recent unseemly race to breed a true blue rose: it produced a lot of roses they said were blue when in fact they were undeniably lilac. 'Rhapsody in Blue' was about the closest they got (even David Austin admits it's purple, but 'fades to slate blue' with age). Here's another one, 'Blue for You' (with apologies for the lack of focus):

 

See what I mean? Lilac.

Luckily the Japanese put an end to all that a few years ago with a bit of genetic engineering injecting a delphinium gene into a rose to make The Blue Rose (still think it's a bit violet though). But the experiments have left their legacy.

As well as the grey roses, there are brown roses: a wave of washed-out colour that isn't apricot and isn't cream and isn't anything, really. This one reminds me of a properly nice apricot (Apricot Silk, perhaps) smudged down with one of those blues or greys:



It's 'Julia's Rose': and it's beige. I like it better than the grey one, but it's definitely a meh sort of colour.

Part of the problem is that these colours are so hard to place in the border. One of my neighbours has 'Rhapsody in Blue' planted among a little mini rose garden outside her house (she's elderly, so be nice). She's bang up to date: but that's the one rosebush that doesn't look right. It's weird, out of synch, the wrong colour for roses.

On the other hand, all this messing with what is good and right has had some positive side-effects. Once you go down the brown route, you reach a fork in the road: the poo option is clearly to be avoided, so obviously the only way is chocolate.

And this is where brown roses start to show why they should exist. Just look at this.

It's 'Hot Chocolate', a sumptuous floribunda that justifies all the misguided breeding efforts in the world if the point of them was to lead to this. Yum, yum.

Postcard from Hampton Court: Carpet bedding is back

The floral (well, green) clock on the wall of summer garden The Wheels of Time (Bronze)

Vertical planting... or carpet bedding?
Another green picture in the Low Cost High Impact garden Summer in the Garden (Silver)

Carpet bedding galore, and all exquisitely executed by the masters of the art at Bournemouth Borough Council's show garden A Very Victorian Fantasy (Silver-gilt) 

Shed roof at The Garlic Farm (gold, and best exhibit in the Growing for Taste marquee)

And more edible carpet bedding, this time from Dobies: Pak choi 'Chuchoi' and 'Rubi' with quite the brightest marigolds I've ever seen

Postcard from Hampton Court: Conceptual

'Light at the End of the Tunnel': Matthew Childs' moving depiction of his journey from injury in the 7/7 bombing through to jacking in his job in advertising and starting a new life as a garden designer. It was the deserved winner of Best Conceptual Garden.

Walking through the industrial boards-and-corrugated iron structure, you start in a dark and dank tunnel lined with hummocks of Asplenium scolopendrium and moss: the parallels with the Underground are unnerving, and the ceiling was dripping when I was there so I started thinking of other claustrophobic, underground places like coalmines.

As you walk through, the gaps widen and the light creeps in: the old, worn, stained sleepers give way to new oak and the planting lightens to dancing Gaura lindheimeri and pretty Astrantia 'Roma' and 'Buckland' amid airy grasses. Thoughtful, detailed, lovely.

The Coral Desert, by Antonia Young (Silver-gilt)
I loved this, with its clever juxtapositions (the driest plants in the world - cacti and succulents - made to look just like underwater coral) drawing attention to the plight of the coral reefs. And the ceiling was a two-inch transparent tray of rippling water. How cool is that?

I admit I make a beeline for the Conceptual Gardens at Hampton Court. More challenging (and often better-executed) than the big show gardens, they're edgy, interesting, thought-provoking.

They always break the rules: they make me perpetually re-think what I mean by the word 'garden'. I've seen conceptual gardens that are upside down, under the ground, under water and inside boxes. Most don't look like 'gardens' at all: and that's why they're so inspiring.

I've always thought that the fact that conceptual gardens are so popular is a tribute to the gardening public. It's easy to think 'most' people who say they like gardening are just boringly traditional and set in their ways, growing veg in straight lines and lining their clipped lawns with bright pink rhododendrons.

And some are. But many - I would even venture to say 'most' - of those who take the trouble to go to a flower show are far more interesting, and interested than that. That's hundreds of thousands of people who relish a challenge and want to garden in a more intelligent, creative way.

There are now conceptual spin-offs at Tatton Park and Chelsea: and they are attracting more crowds and more discussion than anything else.

So perhaps it's not surprising the mainstream designers want a slice of the action: ideas first seen in conceptual gardens are slowly, surely creeping in to the mainstream and sparking other little flashes of inspiration. It keeps design alive, new, inspiring, moving forward: and that can be nothing but good.

Postcard from Hampton Court: Monday

Sorry (again): another long silence.

I have been camera-less which has left me bereft and strangely incapable of wittering on as I usually do. Not sure why not having visible proof silences me quite so efficiently but luckily (or unluckily, depending on your point of view) another flower show came along forcing me to buck up my ideas and acquire a new camera post haste. Canon SX40, since you ask, and yes it is far more complicated than the last one and no I still haven't got further than the auto setting.

The show, of course, was the wonderful RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show: huge, fizzing with energy and ideas, slightly exhausting, thought-provoking, unmissable.

The extraordinary garden in the picture is Anoushka Feiler's 'Bridge over Troubled Water', which won a gold and Best in Show: and for me it stood head and shoulders above the rest.

Show gardens at Hampton Court can be a bit hit-and-miss: what Tony Smith was doing sticking plastic bottles on Arundo donax for Ecover I don't know (his paving conceptual garden was a bit... mmmm... too). Still: at least they try to push the boundaries and do something different, even if it doesn't always come off.

But Anoushka's garden was pure gold: or rather pink. It was the most sensuous, feminine, diaphanous garden: passionate, loving, emotional. The idea behind it was quite simple: a bridge as a journey over hardship (more specifically, overactive bladder - but I did my best not to think about that too much as it just made me want to cross my legs. Click the link if you want to know more.)

Either side were great banks of lush ivies and ferns dripping down to the water - a gorgeous and practical use for vertical planting - on which was built a sumptuous hummocky grassland of pinks and greens over which floated airy honey locust trees (Gleditsia triacanthos 'Elegantissima').

I adored the planting: here Echinacea 'Fatal Attraction' (mysterious and other-worldly without its petals), Dicentra 'King of Hearts', Pennisetum setaceum 'Rubrum' and, I think, the feathery plumes of Deschampsia cespitosa 'Pixie Fountain'.

We've seen Anoushka's work before: she created last year's upside-down conceptual garden, 'Excuse Me While I Kiss the Sky'. Another passionate creation, full of laughter and hope. I'm so glad she's back for more: and I hope we see a lot more of her gardens in years to come.

Postcard from Hampton Court: Sunday

So... farewell then, Hampton Court.

It's been a good one and will live on in the memory for its mega edible garden, for my money the best yet of the centrepieces replacing the old Daily Mail pavilion; and for its evocations of scenes as distant as an Afghan battlefield and as close as a chalk stream in Hampshire. Conceptual gardens broke out of their box and made a bid for the mainstream; and the small gardens reached a quality and integrity that will be hard to match in subsequent years.

But - as usual - the stars of the show were the plants. So as a final flourish here's my last postcard, celebrating all that was wonderful in the Floral Marquee. Let's do it all again next year.

Postcard from Hampton Court: Saturday

Canna 'Cleopatra'

from Hart Canna, on their stall in the Plant Heritage marquee
One of several gorgeous cannas that caught my eye (also into my notebook went the water cannas with their slender spear-like leaves and vibrant flowers: 'Endeavour' was a particularly lovely soft red).

Keith and Christine Hayward have been working for years to eradicate the rampant canna virus, imported with stock from the Netherlands and now so widespread that almost every canna you buy ends up sickly, striped and puckered with disease (I once bought one from a Chelsea garden sell-off, in the days when they did such things, which looked lovely when purchased - only to succumb a few weeks later).

The Haywards however have taken the only responsible approach: take what little unaffected stock remains, and propagate that, developing a range of virus-free canna: probably the only ones in the country you can be pretty much absolutely sure won't develop the disease.

I've followed their progress in this over several years, since they nearly went out of business because of the virus but pulled themselves back from the brink. So I was really pleased to see their stand in the Plant Heritage marquee, full of vividly-flowered cannas with stripes and striations only where they were meant to be. Huge congratulations to both Keith and Christine for their achievement: and it's good to see cannas looking healthy again.

Postcard from Hampton Court: Friday

This gentle joke was tucked away in a corner of the Pococks Roses stand in the Wonderland of Roses marquee. It made me smile: especially since the rose it was referring to was right next door.


Rosa 'Nostalgia' (Pococks Roses)

Postcard from Hampton Court: Thursday

Plant combination of the week goes to The Stone Roses Garden, designed by Stephen Reilly and Donna Taplin(small garden: silver-gilt)

Dreamy and feminine, but with just the right notes of earthy purple, and those roses were sumptuous: it's not often I like pink roses but for these, I would make an exception.

Rosa 'Burgundy Ice'
Stipa tenuissima
Astelia 'Silver Spear'
Pittosporum tenuifolium 'Tom Thumb'
Verbena bonariensis
Acanthus spinosus
Betula ermanii

Postcard from Hampton Court: Wednesday

'Picturesque', designed by Melissa Jolly (Conceptual Garden: Gold)
So clever: a series of plantings inspired by famous paintings, in this case Rousseau's 'Jungle Sunset'. Here's the original:

I also loved 'Natural Spheres' based on the Kandinsky painting, exploiting the naturally spherical shape of plants like alliums and echinops as well as artificial spheres such as trimmed box balls. Other plant 'paintings' included a Damien Hirst airplants-in-a-glass-box and Monet's waterlilies.

All in all, it was an inspired and delightful play on the concepts of garden and art, and still makes me smile.

Postcard from Hampton Court: Tuesday

The World Vision Garden
I'm not usually that sure about what you might call 'land art'. I tend to find myself wondering how you're going to mow an inverted grass cone, and other such imagination-killing practicalities.

But in this case: to hell with the mowing conundrum. Marry land art with a sheet of water and you have absolute sculptural perfection.

The thought behind the garden was that the mound above the water represented the children who have all they need; the sunken grassy pit was those in poverty. The screens fragment the view and from only one perspective is the sphere seen, in reflection, as a perfect whole.

Oh yes - and the planting was subtle, understated and, I thought, sublime, especially against the brooding slatey greys of the (recycled plastic, though you wouldn't know it) screens.


A little planting list for the notebook:

Allium giganteum, Ammi majus, Deschampsia cespitosa "Goldschleier', Gaura lindheimeri "Whirling Butterflies', Nassella tenuissima, Stipa gigantea, Thalictrum flavum ssp. glaucum x rochebrunianum 'Elin', Verbena "Lavender Spires", Verbena bonariensis, Veronicastrum virginicum "Fascination"

Postcard from Hampton Court: Press Day

The garden that wasn't: a 'show feature' rather than a show garden, 'A Garden By Night' is easy to miss as it isn't in the show brochure and only a sign outside an otherwise unremarkable tent at the end of the main avenue of show gardens announces its existence.

But don't miss it: it's quite unlike anything I've ever seen at a flower show before.

Inside a tent, the blazing sun outside blacked out, you entered a twilight world of shadows where you fully expected bats to swoop through the dusk catching moths. And it elevated garden lighting to an art form: Neil Wilkins, glass sculptor, is a very, very talented man. Pure theatre.

Hampton Court 2010: The Floral Marquee

The show is over: but on my way out I had a little photo-frenzy snapping all the plants I've admired during the week on my many visits to the Floral Marquee - this year bigger, better and more conveniently-located than ever before. Enjoy.

Postcard from Hampton Court: Sunday

The Pansy Project: Best Conceptual Garden

Sometimes the simplest ideas are by far the best.

Postcard from Hampton Court: Saturday

The small garden I'd most like to take home with me: Urban Serenity, by David Neale (Gold).

I surprised myself with how much I liked this one, actually: it was a bit 'boy' for my usual taste what with all those crisp lines and bachelor decking, but it was the planting that won me over. I particularly liked these 'floating' planters in the middle of the water feature, filled with nothing but foliage: but what foliage. Podophyllums, an epimedium and an iris or two: not much colour but some truly subtle contrasts of foliage and texture. Serene, soothing, tranquil. And a lesson in why too much colour (other than green) is bad for the nerves.

Postcard from Hampton Court: Friday

Hot, hot, hoooottttt..... This is weather the Reflections of Thailand garden was made for. If you go across the bridge and round the back it's lovely and cool and shady in a jungly sort of way: I do like the planting on this garden. Here it's bat plant (Tacca chantrieri) teamed with a spectacular alocasia and a ferny sort of plant which designer James Clarke said he'd grabbed off the trolley to use as a filler. Some filler.

This one won not only the only gold medal in the show (everyone a bit stumped by that: not by the fact that this garden won a gold, but that none of the other large show gardens else did. I thought the judges were pretty harsh this year).... but also Best in Show. Any snide comments about hotel gardens are easily squashed by a closer look at the planting: quite sublime, and for a foodie like me fascinating what with lotus lilies, turmeric, kaffir limes and lemongrass. Fantastic.

The view from the office

I should apologise for my prolonged absence: life, or rather a series of RHS flower shows, got a little in the way of blogging for a while. And I've sold my house, so I'm a bit preoccupied by my state of flat-out panic about our imminent homelessness. Of which more later.

But for now I'm sitting in the press tent at the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show and this is the view from my window. I'm not entirely sure life gets much better than this: so I resolve to turn my mind away from estate agents for a day or two and just enjoy. See you later!

A hole in the ground

Here's what stole the show at Hampton Court for me this week:

Much to my surprise, as I'm aware I'm usually a bit more conventional - even, dare I say it, square - about these things, it was this tiny experimental garden from Rebecca Butterworth, Victoria Pustygina and Ludovica Ginanneschi which for me beat into a cocked hat all the bells-and-whistles big show gardens and even the quirky Henry VIII's Wives gardens (not sure jawbones will catch on as garden ornaments but you never know).

The thing I liked most about it was that as you approach, the mirrors create the illusion that the planting is stretching away underneath the ground like some subterranean cavern. It's a truly lovely effect.

The planting was fabulous too - all big gorgeous colocasias (alocasias? never could tell the difference) and the slender elegance of Cyperus alternifolius: there were some very understated hemerocallis in there too in just the right shade of dusky pink and butterscotch. It was all beautifully well-judged and deservedly won not only a gold medal but also Best Conceptual Garden.

The garden has a painfully pretentious official write-up - presumably originating from the designers themselves which is mildly worrying - but I got around that by not trying to 'understand' it too much. For me it worked simply as a small but exquisite little piece of planting heaven.