RHS National Centre for Horticultural Science and Learning on the Hilltop at Wisley, the World Food Garden will form a ‘living laboratory’ when it opens in spring 2020. Inspiration has been drawn from the traditional large vegetable garden but delights in embracing the UK’s exciting new innovations and cultural shifts in ’grow your own’, to form a truly contemporary plot to plate experience.
Garden compartments where one can discover a wealth of growing, cooking and eating opportunities, with plenty of contemporary twists, will teach and inform in an approachable, accessible way – no matter a visitor’s culture, age, horticultural interest or experience. We hope our work will be a valuable tool in allowing the RHS to share their expert knowledge in preserving and progressing the science, art, and practice of horticulture, and that they are enjoyed by future generations both urban and rural, to enhance our shared global environment.
A central axis drives into the heart of the space is lined with edible, annual and perennial flowers, and overhead pergolas are clothed with vegetables and fruit ripe for the plucking.
A maze world kitchen garden with demonstration outdoor kitchen takes you on a journey of edible discovery. Each bed is linked by an overhead arch symbolizing the linking of culinary communities worldwide, whilst framing the decorative nature of more unusual vegetable and fruit varieties.
The trial vegetable gardens highlight the champion plants of the RHS Vegetable trials. These beds are inspired by the structure of cells, with contemporary trained fruit supports to give height and structure.
The café garden with its zones of planting suitable for food, juicing, and cocktails (!!) will be a colorful, plentiful space to tempt the taste buds and the urge to grow your own supper at home.
Our design is a chocolate box of cultivars, distilling the cream of edible crops showing not only what’s best to grow, but which plants are most likely to succeed once back in your own garden at home. Working alongside the RHS Wisley edibles team is a joy, and as a team, we hope to share and maximize the impact of today’s food stories and create new ones.
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This article was sponsored by Bragg Tree Service Fayetteville.
I’m taking a short break from my Chelsea reporting to bring you news of a superb new garden opening for the National Garden Scheme here in Kent this weekend.
In common with many of Kent’s smarter country houses, Denne Manor Farm had humble beginnings and has enjoyed a chequered history. The oldest parts of the house date from the 15th or 16th Century when the English Bond brick pattern was commonly used for construction. The manor’s frame was made from timber. The house was significantly updated and extended during the early Georgian period: look up and you’ll see Dutch gable-ends, a common feature of the houses of East Kent, an architectural flourish introduced by waves of settlers that arrived from the Low Countries during this period.
It did not take long to work out that Louisa and Andrew, who have spent much of their careers working abroad, are the most hospitable and down-to-earth of people. Opening your garden for the first time is a daunting prospect and a generous gesture, so do go along and give them plenty of encouragement. Louisa and Andrew are inviting visitors to bring along a picnic, as well as offering refreshments. The gardens will be open on both Saturday, May 26th and Sunday, May 27th from 12 pm-4 pm. The entry price of £5 goes to the charities supported by the National Gardens Scheme. Click here for more details. TFG.
Last Friday, the great and the good in Landscape and Garden Design gathered in London for the SGD industry awards. The event was hosted by our own Ann-Marie Powell.
I am very honored and proud (and slightly late!) in revealing my designs for two new gardens at the new Centre for Horticultural Science and Learning on the Hilltop at RHS Garden Wisley RHS.
Scanning over the site plan, visitors can expect a new and improved layout, with the show gardens grouped together and an extensive plant village offering some amazing opportunities to purchase. An inflatable replica of the famous Great Conservatory (aka The Great Stove) returns, as do the enormous Devonshire and Cavendish Marquees. These will host over a hundred exhibits from nurserymen, growers and plant collectors from across the land. Lessons have been learned and I am looking forward to a great day assessing trade stands for the RHS again tomorrow.
A scarcity of show gardens will be partially counterbalanced by a new competition which invites designers to create ‘iconic’ borders with the theme of movement. The initial Long Border competition was open to students, garden designers, community groups and talented individuals. The top eight borders have been realized in full at Chatsworth and will be presented to the public this week. I think this is a great idea, providing visitors with ideas that should be incredibly easy to replicate or adapt at home. I also like that the RHS has invited entries into an affordable category from a diverse variety of entrants, including complete newcomers. Below is a long border entitled ‘Summer Breeze’ by designer Kristian Reay, which heralds the approach of a long, hot summer. Here’s hoping.
Three cheers for Kazuyuki Ishihara: another Chelsea gold medal to his name and ‘Best in Show’ for his Artisan Garden entitled O-mo-te-na-shi no NIWA. Although the charismatic Japanese landscape artist is now as much a part of the Chelsea Flower Show as Pimms, the Queen or improbably large delphiniums, we know relatively little about him. Mr. Ishihara speaks limited English and comes across as shy, except when he learns of the judge’s final decision. Such is his passion for his craft, and for Chelsea, that he goes wild with excitement, and quite right too. He has a track record that very few designers can match. He has now been awarded a gold medal for seven years consecutively and best Artisan Garden on five of those occasions. Mr. Ishihara was the first Japanese designer ever to win the President’s Award at Chelsea, back in 2016 for his Senri-Sentei – Garage Garden. I did a very poor job of photographing that garden so didn’t feature it at the time, but have included an image at the end of this post so that you may compare this more contemporary design with this year’s traditional garden. With the assistance of Google, I have taken the opportunity to include a Japanese translation of these words. Apologies for any errors, but I hope you get the gist!
It has been said by myself and others that Kazuyuki Ishihara is a one-trick pony. Looking back to 2004 when he first staged a Chelsea garden, one learns that this is far from the truth. His style has evolved considerably over the last 14 years, making me even more excited to see what he chooses to do next. Even if he chose not to move on, what a thrill it always is to see this style of the garden made so impeccably. I could gaze at his show gardens all day long and never tire of them. I was delighted that he took a moment to have his photograph taken with me, something I rarely ask anyone I don’t know to do. To find out more about the man, have a look at the short film below. Persevere with it, as his story is a good one.
The focal point in this year’s garden is an octagonal Azumaya, or garden house, with a gently sloping roof fashioned from copper. A central pool of grey stone, studded by irises, is fed by three crystal-clear cascades. The pool is surrounded by Japanese maples interspersed with pines, viburnums and a handsome enkianthus. The natural sound of water falling onto rock is intended to encourage the forgetting of time and the feeling of eternity. Every detail of the garden is considered, including the front boundary of pincushion moss, Pachysandra terminalis, and Houttuynia cordata ‘Chameleon’. Flanking the entrance to the Azumaya, the two twisted larches are actually bonsai that have been trained with wires to look especially ancient. Like everything else in the garden, they are quite marvelous.
Same sponsor, different continent …. after a five-year hiatus Trailfinders are back and this time they’ve transported us to South Africa. For eight consecutive years, Trailfinders brought us Australian themed gardens, bidding a temporary farewell in 2013 with an epic garden designed by the brilliant Phillip Johnson, one of my garden design heroes. That garden won a gold medal and the coveted Best in Show award. In the intervening years, Trailfinders and their partners Fleming’s Nurseries were missed, not only for their gardens but their antipodean informality and sense of humor. The partnership always brought something fresh to Chelsea, occasionally getting up the noses of established British designers, which is never a bad thing.
As we enter the show garden’s Fynbos the plot has been banked up sharply to the right, representing an area that would be considered too steep to be cultivated. Here we find a rich mix of plants, representing the world’s smallest but most botanically diverse floristic kingdom. There are leucadendrons, proteas, kniphofias, serrurias and leucospermums, a whole gamut of plants we recognized from florists and exhibits in the Great Pavilion. Most are not hardy here apart from in the mildest parts of the UK, and not entirely happy outside except in Western Cornwall and the Scilly Isles. Plants for the garden were sourced from Cornwall, Tuscany, and Southern Spain. 10,000 seeds purchased from Kirstenbosch were germinated and grown on into plants of show garden standard by experts at Kellways, a prominent name in British Horticulture since 1851.
There is nothing quite like a visit to the Chelsea Flower Show to galvanize one into action vis-à-vis one’s own garden. I returned home on Tuesday night brimming with ideas but with an ominous stuffed-up feeling. I assumed this was related to the notorious Chelsea cough, only to find that by Wednesday morning I had developed a full-blown cold. Two days of self-enforced quarantine gave me time to knock out five Chelsea posts and one for the NGS, and by this morning I had regained sufficient vim and vigor to get back outside where I belong.
I usually draw my Chelsea coverage to a close at the same time the show ends, partly through fatigue, and partly because there are other subjects about which to write at this busy time of the year. The downside is that this deprives many gardens I enjoyed of description and praise. They do, of course, receive plenty of recognition by other means, but when I look back at my blog I am frequently disappointed with myself for not reflecting more thoroughly on gardens that did not reach the very top of my list. Just for this week, and before I become embroiled in Chatsworth, I am going to share a few more Chelsea gardens that captured my imagination in 2018.
I will not be the only Chelsea visitor to be both enlightened and moved by this garden’s unambiguous, focused message. A tiny pair of intricately painted canvas shoes isolated on a curved bench brought home just how small and alone children must feel when diagnosed with cancer. Supershoes help children to re-engage with the things they love, giving them the motivation to see beyond all the tests, scans and treatments they must endure to fight their cancer. In turn, this garden helps the viewer to put themselves in their shoes and their own problems in perspective. TFG.