As I stood gazing at my favourite garden for the 100th time - the meadow created by Tom Stuart-Smith and Canadian architect Jamie Fobert - I listened to the comments drift past me. "Ooh, that's a bit modern" and "When they showed it on TV, it looked a bit of a mess - showed it from the wrong angle, didn't they?" and " A whipper snipper wouldn't go astray, would it?"
Indeed, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the show gardens at Chelsea certainly were diverse enough to offer something for just about everyone. From the Eden-esque bio-dome created by inmates of Leyhill Open Prison to the Carpet Garden designed by Prince Charles, the gardens ranged from environmentally responsible to opulent formality, with a little whimsical nostalgia thrown in for good measure. Here's a run down of this year's winning gardens:
Best in show went to the Daily Telegraph's Real Japanese Garden, a serene miniature landscape representing the mountains, fields and seas of Japan. Complete with Tea House, the garden featured a dry-stone seascape of white gravel surrounded by plantings of azaleas and Pieris japanica.
Winning the only other Gold Medal awarded in the show gardens class at this year's show was the meadow created for Laurent-Perrier Harper's & Queen, designed by veteran Chelsea landscapers, Tom Stuart-Smith in collaboration with Jamie Fobert. Filled with vibrant anchusas, foxgloves, yarrows and prairie grasses, the wild meadow stood in stark contrast to the austere red sandstone used for the low walls and water channel that formed an outdoor room. Here's how the BBC saw the garden at http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/chelsea/s...
Of the small courtyard gardens, expanded to a total of 28 this year, Best in Show was awarded to The Elements, designed for the London Borough of Barnet Skills Training Centre by a team led by Catharina Malmberg-Snodgrass, her first entry at Chelsea. Featuring dancing tennis balls suspended by streams of air, primeval fog rising from the depths of a pond, and bronzed glass walls reflecting the cool greens and burgundies of the plantings, the garden fascinated with its movement and whimsy. Speaking during a quiet moment, Catharina urges all gardeners to be daring in their garden design, and to have fun.
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