Green gardening and more foliage than flowers are two trends that caught Jane Powers's eye at the recent Chelsea Flower Show.
Visiting the Chelsea Flower Show does strange things to a person. It turns you into a comparison fiend. Because the show is so medal-driven, there is a fierce air of competition. It floats on the breeze like an unseen virus. Before you know it, you're infected, and are judging all around you.
For instance, I'm usually a fairly uncritical gardener. The fact that someone is actually growing something, and growing it well, is enough to make me happy. But since Chelsea, I've been compulsively evaluating front gardens, pub hanging baskets, hotel window boxes, roundabout plantings and DART station containers. Gold medal for this one, silver for that, and that one over there just squeaking by with a bronze.
Surprisingly, my own garden didn't do too badly when I first stepped into it after returning from London. Parts of it - being at their yearly peak - scraped through with a silver-gilt. And my blue Iris sibirica and lime-foam-topped goat's beard looked every bit as good as those in Terence Conran's and Nicola Lesbirel's "Laurent-Perrier/Harpers & Queen Garden". The duo's effort, which took one of the four gold medals, was a study in green, with the odd blue note, supplied by the iris, violets, and a big bowl of grape hyacinth.
Massed plantings of the rib-leaved loquat (Eriobotrya japonica) made curious, textured shrubberies in the corners. And restios - apparently the must-have plant this year - looked as good as they are capable of looking, interplanted with ferns and mind-your-own-business (Soleirolia). An open-air Poggenpohl kitchen with an adjoining greenhouse full of seedling vegetables and salads completed Conran's and Lesbirel's fantasy that this was a restaurant in a garden.
Fantasy is what Chelsea is all about, of course, and no-one does it better than the New Zealanders (Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, and all that). The Kiwis' first ever outing at Chelsea was inspired by the Patupaiarehe, mythical forest-dwellers. The garden, another predominantly-green creation, was an atmospheric, steamy place inhabited by Maori carvings and fabulous foliage. The attention to detail - down to the delightfully spongy moss and tiny ferns used as groundcover - was admirable. The judges obviously thought so too, and awarded it a gold medal. The other Down Under garden, "Australian Inspiration" with its rammed earth walls, colourful bottlebrush shrubs and stainless steel barbie was not quite in the same class (it won a silver-gilt), but the scent from its eucalyptus log walls was exhilarating.
Also in the green garden mode was Diarmuid Gavin's "A Colourful Suburban Eden". Well, the plants were definitely green and restful, but his many-hued forest of gigantic lollipops dictated the cartoony, frantic feel of the space. His much-talked-about pod room, studded with thousands of coloured enamelled balls, was tucked away at the end of his patch, a glittery egg nestling in the weird woodland. His plot on the main avenue certainly garnered the most attention and comments of all the display gardens at Chelsea. And the will-he-won't-he-finish-it-in-time drama drew me, and crowds of others, to stand and gawk on the perimeter, in a mass gathering of tension and anticipation.
In the end, it wasn't quite finished. The team ran out of plants, and there were a few raw details. Nonetheless, the judges liked it enough to give it one of the six silver-gilt medals awarded this year. Bunny Guinness's garden next door, commemorating 175 years of the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, also won a silver-gilt with its gothic cloister windows, blue flowers and upturned boat. The entire plot was sunk into the ground, so you could view it from above, giving you (or me, at least) the feeling of looking down onto the drawing of a garden, rather than the real thing.
Dan Pearson's "Merrill Lynch" garden, however, was for me, completely the real thing. Its softly swelling mounds of grass were artfully sprinkled with bright veins of species gladiolus and orange hawkbit, like dashes from a paintbrush on a deep-green canvas. Generous fans of coppiced willows swayed gracefully in the breeze, and were doubled in quantity by the reflections in a dark, ovoid pond. In the near-black mirror they were joined by the Royal Hospital's venerable plane trees and the sky above. The quiet beauty of this minimal garden completely floored me. Its making evidently had the same effect on the designer, who was limp and lacklustre, his voice suffused with weariness: "I'm delighted with it, but I'm exhausted now." The judges (soulless creatures) awarded him a silver gilt.
Their "Best in Show" went to Christopher Bradley-Hole's "Hortus Conclusus" designed for His Highness Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al-Nahyan. A strong contender for the top accolade in our own alternative awards, (but we let our emotions rule us, and plumped for Dan) it was a beautifully-designed enclosure. Deeply sophisticated, intertwined plantings of dusty-red roses, perennials and grasses were glimpsed through gaps in the tall hornbeam hedges, offering the viewer the promise of further delights within.
Alas, we didn't get in, but we were compensated outside with a free box of dates and a bottle of "Hortus Conclusus" water.
At the boldly graphic green-and-white, squares-and-cubes "Woolworths Garden", we were treated to Pic 'n' Mix pear drops. The white sweets were also used by the team from the Pickard School to make their striking, altar-like central table. It looked a great deal better than its building material tasted. The garden took a silver medal, which will, no doubt, be a boost to the career of Waterford woman Naomi Coad-Maenpaa, one of the 10 designers.
"A Dream Come True", a small city garden designed by Celia Spouncer and children from Cedar Integrated Primary School in Crossgar, Co Down, was awarded a silver-gilt. The little plot, explained a tired but happy Celia, "celebrates biodiversity, and believing in young people. There is something from every child in the garden" - including planted-up wellies, personally inscribed terracotta tiles, wriggly worms and other creepy critters in ceramic. Crammed with native and cottage garden plants, the little space was vibrant and cheery.
The garden I most wanted to take home, was, oddly enough, one of the most conventional. "After the Lawn" designed by the Brinsbury students of Chichester College and Stephen Firth was a relaxed space, where the lawn had been banished, and where pretty perennials and grasses tumbled over a few big paving slabs.
The garden was put together on a shoe string, with all the materials being salvaged or recycled, and all the plants raised by the students. Its easy-going and modest mood made a refreshing contrast to the ostentation of much of the rest of the show.
Chelsea Flower Show offers 52 display gardens, as well as 600 exhibits from nurseries, floral artists, and purveyors of garden sundries. The Irish Times duo tramped many miles around the 11-acre site, our feet sore, our backs bowed by the reams of promotional brochures, and our heads in permanent swivel mode, lest we miss a single thing.
Unfortunately, I'm sure we missed plenty, especially in the Great Pavilion where the nurseries and seedsmen were congregated. Yet I managed to find my heroes, Robinsons, who sell mammoth onion seeds (I once came second in a competition: there were two of us, but the other guy wasn't quite honourable). Their display of home-grown veg was not as flamboyant as that of Medwyn's Vegetables (which won the President's Award), but their tomato pyramids, carrot baskets and adolescent mammoth onions brought happy tears to my eyes.
When finally we left, full of the sights, sounds and smells of Chelsea, we headed for our hotel, walking along the perimeter of the Royal Hospital. Nature had been at work just inside the wrought-iron railings, planting a garden of cow parsley and burdock. The lacy, airy umbels of white flower and finely-cut leaves of the former were set off nicely by the broad and architectural foliage of the latter. Unanimously, we awarded it a gold.
THE IRISH TIMES ALTERNATIVE CHELSEA FLOWER SHOW AWARDS
Best in show: Dan Pearson's "Merrill Lynch Garden".
Most sophisticated garden: "Hortus Conclusus" designed by Christopher Bradley-Hole for His Highness Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al-Nahyan.
Most talked-about garden: Diarmuid Gavin's "A Colourful Suburban Eden".
Best smelling garden: "Australian Inspiration" for the scent from its eucalyptus log wall.
Happiest garden: "A Dream Come True", designed by Celia Spouncer and children from Cedar Integrated Primary School in Crossgar, Co Down.
Garden we'd most like to take home: "After the Lawn" designed by the Brinsbury students of Chichester College and Stephen Firth.
Most utterly British garden: Bunny Guinness's "The Stonemarket Boat Race Anniversary Garden".
Most happy-making nursery display: W. Robinson & Son's beautifully-grown, perfect vegetables.
CHELSEA TRENDS: WHAT'S IN
Green gardening: sustainability, recycling and being friends with wildlife.
The other kind of green gardening: plantings of massed foliage, with few flowers to distract from the verdant scene.
History: looking back at 200 years of the RHS; paying homage to planthunters; and a reappearance of formal gardens.
Global gardens: the celebration of exotic plants, and international garden design, as featured in displays and gardens from (or inspired by) South Africa, Kenya, New Zealand, Australia, Ecuador, the Caribbean, Japan, Russia and the Middle East. Oh, and Ireland.
Children: gardens designed by children, or with them in mind.
PLANT TRENDS
Deep red flowers (in vogue now for several years): Cirsium rivulare 'Atropurpureum', Knautia macedonica, any red Astrantia major, dusky-red old-fashioned roses.
Jewel coloured flowers: the ruby-toned ones mentioned above; deep-blue Salvia and Anchusa; rich orange poppy, verbascum and Geum; yellow daylily; cerise allium, gladiolus and hardy geranium.
Tall plants: verbascum, foxglove.
Grasses: all kinds of grasses, including understated, wild-looking ones such as snow rush (Luzula nivea).
Carnivorous plants: any species of the distinctive vase-shaped pitcher plant, Sarracenia.
Restios: interesting (rather than elegant) grass-like plants from South Africa.