THE EDEN PROJECT

I take an annual excursion to the Chelsea Flower Show as evidenced by my blogging throughout the months of April and May this past year. Lately friends have been asking for my photos and reports on the trip.  So here goes…

In the show garden category there were many thought provoking and stunningly elaborate gardens to speak of, but I’ll highlight the most socially redeeming – “Places of Change”, which was created by the Eden Project (creator of an equally special garden in last year’s show -  “the Key”).  This garden is a collaboration between the Eden Project, Homes and Communities Agency (HCA), Communities and Local Government (CLG), Homeless Link (HL) and approximately 50 homeless charities and eight prisons from across the UK.  The garden was built entirely by homeless persons and prisoners – a social investment program.  According to the Eden Project “The garden presents a series of achievements and aspirations from the people that are least likely to be heard and most likely to surprise us.”  Drawing on Eden’s “Growing for Life Program” --“it demonstrates how horticulture is the the foundation for so many opportunities, for example building skills, providing space for recvery, growing business and adapting to changing and difficult times.” Or as Landscape Manager of the garden Paul Stone puts it—“Eden has a worldwide philosophy of wanting to make people aware of the importance of the relationship between people and plants and the whole thing just ties in together. The overall theme is that horticulture is at the centre of life and from it come all the things we need. We can push that message home by involving the most unlikely candidates: homeless people and prisoners - amateurs who may be in the process of training or work experience – giving them an opportunity. We like to think of our teams as buried treasure, the ones that society tends to give up on, but here they are and I’ve got every reason, especially after last year, to expect just as much from this garden. “

Whereas the rest of the show gardens strive for gold medals, when asked if this is of importance, Landscape Manager Paul Stone responded, “Striving for excellence is the aim, if Gold is part of that then fine. We’re not classic gold medal material - our budget is being spent on people. I could buy lots of fine plants, but what benefit would that have for the people we are trying to help? OK, at the moment we’ve got people we’ve never met, who haven’t grown plants before, growing plants. It’s touch and go, but we are approaching it in a professional way and I expect the result to be comparable to the other gardens.”

Further information can be found on

their blog

. 

My pictures of the garden follow below, but first one of the many videos off their site which fully illustrates the redeeming value of this project.

There were a multitude of elements and areas to this, the largest garden plot at Chelsea.

courtyard

vegetable garden

the wishing tree - write a wish and affix it to the tree

my personal favorite - appliances turned into pots

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With an eye toward sustainable solutions, Nigel Dunnett, Adrian Hallam and Chris Arrowsmith presented an atypical garden at Chelsea last year… one that is both educational and creative in it’s approach. The “Future Nature” garden looks to a future for landscapes and gardens in a changing and unpredictable climate. This garden presents a number of practical solutions that can be used to create a new type of drought-resistant urban garden especially suited to underutilized city spaces. Its central message is, that by using a combination of any of the garden’s features coupled with careful plant selection, anybody, using simple planting methods and avoiding irrigation except with stored rainwater, can create a colorful and naturalistic garden. It aims to both help alleviate pressure on the urban drainage infrastructure in wet weather and maximize the use of water during increasingly dry summer months.

The central idea to this garden is water.... In the northern hemisphere, due to the rotation of the earth about its polar axis water flows down holes n a clockwise direction.  Check the sink or toilet, next time you go to the loo!!  Henceforth this landscape design is expressed in a spiral, clockwise direction.

Green roof - The colorful flowering green roof acts like a sponge, absorbing half of all the rainfall that falls on it, reducing the rate of stormwater run-off after heavy rainfall.  A mixture of sedums are chosen to withstand the harsh exposed conditions found on rooftops and provide a rich source of nectar for visiting insects on what would otherwise be a sterile and lifeless surface.  Well known are the benefits of green roofs - in addition to stormwater retentions and providing wildlife habitats, they also provide social benefits, improve air quality, modify urban micro-climates, provide insulation against heat and sound within the building and increase the life expectancy of the roof, and in some municipalities provide property tax credits and assist toward leed certification.

Together with the stormwater planter this series of small pools collect any excess rainwater that leaves the green roof.  The water passes thru a series of what is represented as small pools through upright growing aquatic plants that help to clean and purify the water before it spills into the rill (small channel).  The rill is designed to be attractive when not filled with water.

The line of the green roof flows in a spiral round o the pools and then via the rill to the central pool and vertical garden tower.The spiral is found in many cultures as a symbol of life and eternity.... a fitting form for a garden that aims to prolong the life of plants and addresses the pathway to a sustainable future by managing water, the source of life.

Key features of the garden include: a green roof to help reduce surface water runoff as well as enhancing biodiversity; storm water planters and pools to retain water from the roof; a living tower holding drought-resistant plants; butterfly mounds and insect towers stocked with colorful but drought-resistant planting that provide wildlife habitats in a brownfield environment.

Vertical Garden Tower - Full of intricate detail, composed of stacked and reclaimed materials.

Space for plant material, insects and other wildlife to find shelter and homes.

Unlike many “living walls” this also encompasses which require large amounts of water, this vertical garden is not dependent upon continuous irrigation.

Wild Flower Meadow - a designed and stylized version of the cosmopolitan mix of native and non-native plants that colonize urban wasteland sites and can be hotspots for the wildlife that grazes on the native species.

Stormwater Basins - Excess rainwater that leaves the green roof either falls directly into the stormwater planter, which absorbs further waste or drains into the collecting pools.  The planting will tolerate being inundated with water, but will also withstand long periods of drier conditions.  Stormwater basins can be used where rains lack the capacity to deal with all the run-offs from private property.

Like many gardens at Chelsea this garden was relocated to Yorkshire after the show and through its use continues to promote the inventive use of small urban spaces and water management.

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Glitz in the Garden. Consider man’s attempt to conquer nature within the landscape as a symbol for wealth and power. Specific oppulent civilizations  provide many examples throughout recorded history – as punctuated by Hadrian’s Villa, Versailles, and Hearst Castle.

Garrett Eckbo- “As social inequieties become more complex, those who have more than the average, and more than they need, tend to express or flaunt such surpluses…. For the common man, dish gardens, patios or suburban backyards may provide symbols of memories of the paradise of the rich.”

From the Telegraph, here is this morning’s article on this year's 20 million pound show garden, the most expensive in the history of “The Great Show”.  (Interestingly, this comes after complaints at last years show that Chelsea had scaled back, reflective of the global recession.)

“David Domoney's design is the most expensive in the event's 97 year history.

The Ace of Diamonds garden will be littered with jewels loaned by Bond Street store Leviev. The garden celebrates the links between plants and precious stones and its centrepiece will be diamond jewellery worth millions that will require unprecedented security.

It will boast a £1 million peony-shaped ring with pink and green diamonds and a daisy-shaped ring set with a rare, flawless blue diamond worth £3.2 million.

Domoney, who formerly appeared on ITV's This Morning, also hopes to include an even more valuable uncut diamond in his elaborate, outdoor display.

The garden will be worth more than all Chelsea's other collections put together when the Royal Horticulture Society's annual showpiece begins on May 25.

Many of the plants being used by Domoney have gemstones in their names such as euonymous emerald gaiety, potentilla gold finger and hosta diamond tiara.

A looping path of stepping stones leads to a central, diamond-shaped patio. When viewed from above, it is said to look like a pendant necklace.

The garden will boast Chiltern marble, Roman plinths and backlit walls with semi-precious stones such as quartz and amethyst.

The gems will be on display for the gardens launch and the duration of the judging.  Domoney, who has previously suggested using Viagra to perk up wilting plants, said: "I always endeavour to introduce something a little bit more entertaining and this garden is something really special.

"I am aiming to give the garden a real James Bond-style feel.

"There will be more bling on display than on Paris Hilton.

"But we will be asking the judges to think of Helen Mirren for a touch of class.

"It's high end and extreme but with a strong horticultural message. Its a jewellery box garden. "This garden will be the most expensive that Chelsea has ever had or is ever likely to have.”

"It will be more valuable than all the rest of Chelsea collections from this year and last year combined." RHS shows director Bob Sweet said: "We are all very excited that this very valuable diamond will be sat on a table in David's outdoor garden.  "We have tight security at Chelsea anyway but something like this will require special attention, which it will definitely get."

Chelsea's world-famous show gardens typically cost no more than £250,000.

The Ace of Diamonds is the second of four Domoney gardens designed for airline sponsor BMI's Diamond Club, following on from last year's Ace of Spades.

For that, a Harley Davidson motorbike took pride of place in a large pit shaped like a giant ace of spades and lined with recycled garden spades.”

 Last years Ace of Spades garden. 

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Maquette of "I Dream, I Seek My Garden."

Here is the third in my presentation of gardens I've enjoyed at Chelsea past.

I Dream, I Seek My Garden

was brought to life by a Malaysian, Linda Davies

in 2008

, with the help of Chinese artist, Shao Fan.

Davies said her aim was to introduce modern Chinese gardens to the western world. Backed by KT Wong Charitable Trust, her father’s organization dedicated to promoting cultural understanding and Anglo-Chinese relations, Davies commissioned the acclaimed Shao F

an to make her vision a reality.

Designer Sarah Eberle assisted Shao Fan as project manager.

The garden they came up with was designed to seem like it was recently discovered, excavated from an abandoned archaeological site in modern England. The top level is an English meadow which opens out to a hidden Chinese temple garden below. Step into the multi-layered garden, and you are transported to the Song dynasty era where colors are cold and sober. The deliberate ruin is set in a sunken arena deep in the ground and is part landscape, part building and part garden. Within its weathered earthen walls are mossy rocks and venerable artifacts. A semi-dilapitated but magnificent Chinese pavilion stands as a centrepiece in the heart of the garden, the wooden pavilion sinking into the soil to represent the increasing disappearance of traditional Chinese culture. The cultural symbolism of the plants is of paramount importance, notably the pine, bamboo and plum. These are known as the “three friends of winter”, as the first two are evergreen, while the plum flowers bloom only at the end of winter.  The garden is closed off from the outside world by very high walls, which in the traditional Chinese gardens serve the very practical purpose of conferring privacy.

“China’s oldest architecture has survived, but it has been far harder to preserve the gardens. This garden is a way to bridge the present with the China of hundreds of years ago. I’m trying to find a way back to our traditions of art and culture, and for the Western world to have a glimpse of it,” said

Shao Fan

.

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This serene garden was designed by Tom Stuart-Smith for Laurent-perrier in 2008.  Tom will be designing the 2010 show garden as well.

Designed as a contemplative space with a dreamy and slightly surreal character, it is a garden based on the idea of juxtaposing opposites. The layout of the garden is made by overlaying a number of separate patterns. A grove of 30-year-old hornbeams pruned to appear like rounded ‘clouds’ seem to float above a criss-crossing net of Flemish brick paths.

An undulating tapestry of predominantly green herbaceous plants including 

Rodgersia

, 

Molinia

, 

Epimedium

, 

Asarum

, 

Hosta

 ‘Devon Green’ and 

Astrantia 

is designed to calm, with an emphasis on form and texture, rather than colour. Zinc tanks brimming with water (and appearing to overflow) are placed throughout the garden and offer a visual link to the large zinc-panelled rear wall. Its beautiful patina and cool blue-grey color providing the perfect backdrop to the contemplative setting.

The garden was in part a reaction against the traditional ‘Chelsea garden’ with its eye-catching features and assumptions about how people will experience a space. It was also about atmosphere and mood, setting an intentional contrast between the alluring beauty of the exterior with its white peonies, and the more melancholic middle part of the garden.

Tom Stuart-Smith on his garden....

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Created by one of my favorite designers, this show garden was exhibited at Chelsea in 2008. Enjoy!

With monastic simplicity as her theme, Arabella Lennox Boyd's design for The Daily Telegraph garden is a contrast of vertical and horizontal elements; of planting and water; of hard and soft. Quiet beauty and minimalism.  Her inspiration came from the zen garden of raked gravel at the temple of

Roan-ji in Kyoto Japan

.  There's also the echo of the traditional yin-yang symbol in the "s" shaped central pathway and balanced placement of rocks.

Dry Garden @ Roan-ji

Two thirds of the site has been flooded by water,  The garden is dominated by a rectangular shallow, stone-edged, pool of water which fills the centre of the garden, and is softened by planting on two sides.  The surface is broken by rocks and a serpentine path of slate paving. They are crossed by twisting ribbons of white waterlilies (Nymphaea alba), which links the front of the garden to the planting at the back, and leads the eye towards a bamboo thicket.

A narrow strip of  tiered yew hedging runs alongside the pool.  At the rear of the site, the garden diffuses into the green shade of a large Caucasion Wingnut tree. Pterocarya fraxinifolia. It's appreciates moisture, produces long green catkins and pendulous strings of fruit later in the season, has handsome pinnnated leaves. 

Large green leaves (including Gunnera), grey leaves, vertical bamboo and iris, rounded shrubs and roses create a rhythm.   At the rear of the garden, under the large Pterocarya fraxinifolia,  Arabella has set a mirror behind a grove of bamboo (Phyllostachys aurea and P. sulphurea f. viridis) which provides a bright, flickery shimmer that echoes the play of light on water.

The pool is edged in loose slate chippings sandwiched beween 2 strips of purbec limestone, hand hammered to create a dimpled surface.

ENGLISH LANDSCAPE

I will be attending the Chelsea Flower Show in late May.  The “Great Spring Show” (as it was once labeled), has become an annual pilgrimmage for my family.  As a precursor to this show and as a way to share my enthusiasm for it, I will frequently be writing posts about context, history of the show and providing past designs of show gardens from recent years. Enjoy.

A very young and spry (then) Princess Elizabeth at the Chelsea Flower Show (circa 1949)