Plants that Pleased at Chelsea

I’ve been trawling through my many images of Chelsea and. Some are just for admiring – others I may well emulate.
Orange was definitely the colour du jour with geums, verbascums and erysimums popping up in many of the gardens. I loved the orange erysimum in the Sentebale garden – it was a great foil for the acid greens of the euphorbias.

Geums popped up everywhere and I was very taken by the brown tinged variety that is called ‘Alabama Slammer’.

I also loved the combination of yellow verbascums with bronze fennel, lysimachia ‘Beaujolais’, angelica, euphorbia and dark leaved dahlias planted by Sean Murray, the winner of the Great Chelsea Challenge.

Then there was the hard landscaping stand that must have been Dutch if the bike hung with tulips in soft shades of orange was anything to go by, and the very in-your-face Dahlia ‘Ludwig Helfert’ which brought a smile to everyone’s faces.

The Great Britain Orchid Society had some extraordinarily beautiful cultivars – but this is definitely in the ‘admire’ rather than ‘grow’ category. It needs a lifetime of single-minded devotion to produce flowers like this.

In complete contrast to these sunny hues, Chris Beardshaw’s garden featured a fabulous blend of moody colours from deep purple lupins, Salvia ‘Caradonna’ and pale blue camassias, to what I describe as dirty-pink verbascums, plus inky blue irises, dark aquilegias and pink highlights of Geranium palmatum – perfection.

The Hardy’s stand had an eye-catching combo of rich blue anchusa, bright orange geums and off-white umbels of melanoselinum decipiens. This is a plant I have in my own garden where they have reached giant proportions. I asked how they restricted the height and the secret is to grow them in pots – I will be doing that in future as they are smothering their companions right now.