Royal Horticultural Society - RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2008

Andrew Duff, Director of the Garden Design Faculty at the Inchbald School of Design, picks out his preview selection of emerging trends and ‘must see’ gardens for RHS Chelsea 2008.

The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is my favourite time of year with many Inchbald graduates showing wonderful gardens and seeing our students busily engaged in helping build show gardens. As well as a spectacle in itself, Chelsea is a focal point for emerging trends and exciting designers which is hugely energising and a source of inspiration for gardener enthusiasts from all walks of life.

Below, take a look at my top trends and my preview of Gardens to Watch.

RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2008: Gardens to Watch

This year sees the return of Cleve West with his BUPA garden full of wonderfully subtle symbologies: textured concrete creating contrast and inviting interaction between the visitor, soothing water, paths and embracing planting schemes that are included to calm and capture the imagination of dementia sufferers. Good strong classic, native planting of Amelanchier and Carpinus offer structure and are under-planted with strong mix of grasses and perennials.

Robert Myers brings the excitement of architecture into his garden for Cadogan with green walls divided by panels of pre-cast stone. It is certainly a wonderful feat for a small space and a definite ‘must see’.

Andy Sturgeon returns for Cancer Research with another strikingly dynamic design; the backdrop being constructed of shot blasted steel rings of various sizes which sounds tantalising and will offer an innovative way of creating a boundary within the garden. Cutting-edge concrete render for the pathways made from crushed almonds is another characteristically forward-thinking feature.

Arabella Lennox-Boyd’s garden for The Daily Telegraph, conveys an air of zen-like calm. In place of hard landscaping, Arabella will use planting to communicate her concept, weaving this around a huge stone-edged, rectangular pool, punctuated with a serpentine path of stone and some wonderfully contrasting grey foliage.

Daylesford Organic’s Summer Solstice garden adapts the iconic kitchen garden with 21st century needs. Here, the ‘kitchen garden’ becomes the ‘garden kitchen’ with shelter for preparation offered by way of an architectural green-roofed building. It is encouraging to see that Daylesford are championing British species, using native planting to flank the garden and provide natural shelter. A green wheat-field at the foot of the garden is a striking gesture to modernism and simplicity.

2008 sees Inchbald graduate and double Chelsea Gold Medal winner Philip Nixon going it alone producing a Savills garden, inspired by the Tate Modern. It is incredibly structured and geometric; plants framed by buxus hedging allowing a freeform, almost conceptual pallet of planting to be involved in between large spaces. Pools reflect the textures and colours in the gardenas if paintings on the wall.

Studio Lasso will provide us with a garden bathed in silver moonlight, interpreting Japanese concepts into a western way of living. Inchbald graduate Haruko Seki’s garden at Chelsea 2007 was critically acclaimed and it is a positive sign to the industry that she is back creating a main garden.

Can Tom Stewart Smith do it again with his Laurent Perrier garden; a garden based on understatement and juxtaposing opposites? Tom is using 30 year old hornbeams, pruned into cloud shapes, giving a sense of maturity to the space. Traditional materials are being deployed; Flemish brick will be laid over the garden like a net and I am keen to see his return to undulating tapestry planting which pulls the garden together in a calm and poised way.

Inspired by the natural beauty of the Welsh Black Mountains, one to watch this year is the Wynniatt Hussey Clarke garden for QVC, which I predict to be a real show stopper. Naturalistic planting and a reflective space has drawn inspiration from architect Richard Neutras, in the creation of steel framed structures at the rear of the garden. A beautiful pallet of grasses blended with umbellifers will provide a stimulating and exciting planting scheme using a palette of white and lime-green.

The Inchbald will have stand EA19 at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2008

For more information on the Inchbald School of Garden Design log onto: http://www.inchbald.co.uk