Naturally Inspired

If you love to walk in the woods and like wild places, there is much to please you at this year’s show. Multi-stemmed trees casting dappled shade, dry habitats with plants emerging from between rough rocks, trickling watercourses, pines (unseen for many years in the main show gardens) and a corner of Provence seemingly picked up and transported undisturbed to SW1 – it’s all there. And of course much, much more. Some bonkers, some challenging, but as television does such a great job of taking you around the show and uncovering the stories behind the gardens, I’ll just do a quick trip around my top picks of the show gardens that I’m sure are destined for Gold:

Jekka McVicar’s Modern Apothecary Garden – an atmospheric and gorgeously planted meditative and healing herb garden that is destined to be rebuilt at a hospice

Nick Bailey’s magnificent Beauty of Mathematics – a tribute to natural symmetries within the kingdom of plants

Andy Sturgeon’s dramatic Telegraph Garden where the bronze fins represent mountains within arid setting

James Basson’s L’Occitane Garden in which he has recreated yet another corner of Provence so realistic that I almost expected to hear the cicadas

Cleve West’s M&G Garden that recalls the Exmoor of his youth with stunted oaks, craggy rocks and a gentle palette of ferns and flowers