Three Gardens from the Chelsea Flower Show 2015 Preview

In my earlier post about Sir Paul Smith, I wrote about the role of green as the anchor that holds everything in place in a garden – so it’s unsurprising that the greenness was what I noticed as I looked at some of the drawings of this year’s Chelsea gardens. No doubt, when we get to Chelsea our eyes will seek out the excitement, and the actual gardens will be further enlivened by shape, texture and the play of light, but it is useful to see the contribution that green makes to each of the gardens and bear it in mind for the planting in our own garden.

Jo Thompson’s Sylvan Retreat will have a two storey writer’s retreat tucked amongst a glade of birches and ‘floating’ in the middle of a natural swimming pond. It looks wonderfully romantic and promises tumbling roses and blowsy paeonies – only comment is that with all those lovely distractions will the writer ever get any work done!

The Trugmaker’s Garden is an Artisan Garden that promises to be of particular interest to me. Several years ago I wrote a feature about one of the few surviving Sussex trugmakers and I spent some time with her (yes, her) in her wonderful workshop and came away appreciating the complexity of the process and the strength needed to fashion a trug. The trug I bought from her is still in regular use – they are incredibly robust and although mine is well-weathered it is a strong and functional as the day I bought it.

Prince Harry’s Sentebale Garden
This garden, designed by Matt Keightley is an interpretation of the Mamohato Children’s Centre, a sustainable, beautiful and locally-inspired centre that will support to some of Lesotho’s most vulnerable children where one child in three is an orphan and 40,000 adolescents are living with HIV. Called ‘Hope in Vulnerability’, Matt will use traditional and sustainable Lesothan building techniques and plant the garden with vibrant colour combinations.