Ravishing Wildflowers at the Chelsea Flower Show - Gardenista
Although wildflowers are adored in the garden by bees, butterflies, and other pollinators, they don’t usually wrest center stage away from the more traditionally formal plantings at the annual Chelsea Flower Show in London–much less win a gold medal. But garden designer Sarah Price, who is also co-designer of London’s Olympic Park, created a ravishingly pretty meadow at the show this year, using her fine art background to compose the colors, textures, and shapes of her plants into a tangible design. Sarah Price in her Chelsea show garden. Sarah uses plants which we would expect to find in English hedgerows but not necessarily at the biggest gardening event of the year. Photograph via Sarah Price Landscapes. Price has drawn on memories of holidays on Dartmoor in Devon and in the Black Mountains in Wales. Photograph via Sarah Price Landscapes. Delicate combinations of thalictrum, persicaria, valeriana, marsh marigold, and royal fern. The grasses and flag iris give a hint of what they can do when they break free from the ruler-straight beds. Multi-stemmed birch trees provide the solid verticals in this ethereal, wavy garden. Straight lines and not so straight lines: limestone slabs contrast with the pool edging. White ragged robin mingling with horsetail, bounded between rocks.