Posted: Thursday 8 March 2012
by Andy Sturgeon
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is just around the corner and you wouldn’t believe how my head is whirring at the moment.
Where to start? The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is just around the corner and you wouldn’t believe how my head is whirring at the moment. It’s a mess in there.
In this new weekly blog I’ll be writing about the contemporary garden I’ve designed for M&G Investments. The design is based on Arts and Crafts Movement principles, with implied garden ‘rooms’. Think of the hedged spaces around the house at Hidcote, and the formal, Italianate, stone terracing and pools evident in many Arts and Crafts gardens, but especially favoured by Jekyll and Lutyens.
However, I’ve looked beyond just the Arts and Crafts gardens, and picked up on the oak that featured in the architecture and furniture. I’ve also designed a huge snaking copper sculpture, inspired by the jewellery that was an important, but often overlooked part of the movement.
But this garden is no pastiche, and I worry that when visitors pitch up at the show expecting to find Sissinghurst, they will think I’ve been at the sauce. I’ve termed the overall style the ‘New English Garden’, and I hope the planting will look original, even though it contains plenty of familiar cottage and country garden favourites.
I’m using the planting to soften, and therefore contrast with the hard lines of the built elements, another idea which I’ve directly lifted. This planting style I’m describing as ‘woodland edge’, and it is fairly natural as the Arts and Crafts concept dictates.
The chosen plants will all thrive in partial shade, which basically means that they will receive some sun, and some shade, each day, but never be in deep shade or full sun. I’ve also assumed the soil is damp and I have therefore taken the liberty of imagining the perfect growing conditions. If anyone has such a garden I want it.
And so here is a garden that contains all the things I can’t grow in my dry, shady, Brighton plot. One of the most frustrating plants for me at home has been the humble Iris sibirica - so just to be on the safe side for Chelsea I am growing 500 of the variety ‘Tropic Night’. There are some plants you just can’t live without.
