COMBINATIONS INSPIRED BY WORLD EXPERTS
Planting combinations inspired by Chelsea 2016
The show gardens at Chelsea are a treasure trove for inspiring planting ideas. Here’s a few of my favourites from the show gardens.
Catherine MacDonald’s Hartley Botanic Garden
This garden is simple in approach but with a powerful atmosphere. A floating glasshouse sits on a water feature with fish in it. A subtle tapestry of pink foxglove spires, pale lemon lupins and fluffy cow parsley with multistem birches offer a contrast to the horizontal hard landscaping. A perfect woodland retreat.
Andy Sturgeon’s Jurassic themed Telegraph Garden
This subtle approach involves many plants as part of a larger tapestry. The star is the Isoplexus isabelliana, a Digitalis genus from the Canary Islands. Its rusty orange picks up on the bronze sculptures in this Gold medalwinning and Best in Show garden.
Nick Bailey’s Winton Beauty of Mathematics Garden
Based on the beauty of mathematics this garden uses the strikingly spiralled Aloe polyphylla and other succulents that bledd into a lusher Mediterranean landscape where the dusty oranges of Geum ‘Mai Tai’and the fluffy heads of the stunning Iris ‘Warrior King’ pick up on the warm tones of the garden’s copper features. www.rhs.org.uk