10 Garden Ideas to Steal from the 2015 Chelsea Flower Show Winner - Gardenista
Dan Pearson has been designing gardens since kindergarten, and in adult life he has embraced the opportunity to shift landscapes (the Tokachi Millennium Forest in Japan) and create new ones in odd places (a planned garden bridge in London). So it was no surprise when he moved boulders from Derbyshire to London on flatbed trucks in order to create his Chatsworth garden at the 2015 Chelsea Flower Show last week, delighting the critics, mesmerizing visitors, and winning a gold medal. Photograph by Jim Powell. The genius of Pearson’s space was that while existing within the artifice of a well-known flower show–visited by around 160,000 people in less than a week–it managed to look completely natural. Despite the plastic hoardings and all the busy-ness, this appeared to be a piece of ungardened landscape. Minglers: Humble and Exotic Any doubters as to whether this was a proper garden (or in fact a piece of borrowed landscape) need only have looked to the planting of exotics, such as the candelabra primula. Photograph by Jim Powell. Not only are they perfectly suited to the boggy conditions of a stream, their ancestors also would have traveled from the Himalayas via the great Victorian plant hunters. During the week before the show’s opening, huge racks identified this Chelsea garden; on each shelf was a large mat of turf from Wildflower Turf. Photograph via Wildflower Turf. Photograph by Kendra Wilson for Gardenista. White thalictrum brightened up the layers of green, its foliage mixing easily with ferns and grasses. Photograph by Kendra Wilson for Gardenista. Its common name of ‘Turk’s Cap Lily’ reminds us that the martagon lily has only been here for a few hundred years and is more commonly seen in continental Europe. Seen growing among the woodlanders in Beth Chatto’s garden, it brings glamor to an unpretentious setting while naturalizing with other homegrown friends of the shade. Boulders. “It’s not about replicating,” says James Alexander-Sinclair, one of the judges who nudged Pearson toward a gold medal. Photograph by Jim Powell. Photograph by Kendra Wilson for Gardenista. Pearson’s garden had a hard edge, which stopped it from becoming too woolly and untamed. (A wineglass tossed into the rather trampled undergrowth told a story on Saturday morning). A few years ago reliable gold-medal-winner Chris Beardshaw added rhododendrons to his Chelsea garden and caused quite a stir. The main point was that they were beautiful and yellow and confounded the plant snobs. Photograph by Jim Powell. Photograph by Kendra Wilson for Gardenista. Pollarded willow is sculptural and efficient, the tree that keeps on giving. Photograph by Kendra Wilson for Gardenista. The stream in Pearson’s garden trickled through the plants, which relaxed convincingly at water’s edge. Photograph by Kendra Wilson for Gardenista. “There are lots of opportunities for looking,” as Dan told me during the set up.