London’s annual Chelsea Flower Show is all about taking gardening to the absolute extremes. Each year, the flowers get bigger, the art in the garden more glamorous and the garden designs more spectacular. And despite the recession, Irish garden designer Diarmuid Gavin did not disappoint Chelsea fans this year.
In search of an elusive gold medal, Diarmuid took his seventh garden for the Chelsea Flower Show, literally up in the air. Inspired by the floating islands of Pandora in the blockbuster movie, Avatar, and influenced by the latest “Restaurants in the Sky” craze, Gavin chose to suspend his “Irish Sky Garden” from a giant crane.
Described as the “Hanging Gardens of Chelsea”, Diarmuid’s 16m- long pink steel garden pod was raised to a height of 25m.
As the first floating garden to be seen at the show, it provided the occupants with a bird’s-eye view of the whole event.
Below the floating pod were 25 circular pools intended to reflect the suspended pod. Taking up 40m×18m on the ground, the Irish Sky Garden was allocated the largest space yet granted to a single garden at the Chelsea Flower Show.
Irish media storm
Few people are disputing the enormous success of Diarmuid’s gold award-winning floating garden. Although it may have terror ised a few health and safety officials during the build up, it won the online People’s Choice for the Best Garden at Chelsea and transformed Gavin into the rock star of international gardening last week.
Now that the show is over, Diarmuid’s Avatar-inspired sky garden is to be erected in a tourist entertainment complex (Mardyke) in Cork, the second largest city in the Republic of Ireland. While the engineering ingenuity of the garden design is undisputed, a media storm has broken over the taxpayer finances used to create it.
According to the Irish Mail on Sunday, local councillors are now asking how the Cork City Council and Fáilte Ireland (the Irish tourism board) could possibly allocate between e2.3 million (R22.7m) and e2.5m to pay for Diarmuid’s floating garden at Chelsea in such recessionary times. Two Irish cabinet ministers are involved, both of whom maintain that the garden will become an iconic tourist attraction in County Cork.
Trends
Chelsea had 600 exhibits at this year’s show, including 40 gardens designed by internationally renowned landscapers. Here are just a few of the trends spotted at the Chelsea Flower Show this year.
l Described by the judges as a new era in modern classical gardening, landscape designs (including the judges’ Best on Show garden) incorporated modern design elements, such as bold sculpture or a steel structure, surrounded by meadows and prairies of naturalistic wildflowers or fruit- salad herbaceous borders filled with grasses and colourful flowers.
l The Australians designed two beautiful water-wise gardens and a touch of glamour was added by a Mediterranean roof garden sponsored by the Principality of Monaco.
Opened by Prince Albert of Monaco, who arrived at Chelsea without his South African born fiancée, the garden was filled with low water usage plants that thrive in Monaco’s hot summers. Included in the plantings were South African water-wise stalwarts such as Hottentot fig (Carpobrotus edulis), Lampranthus, Osteospermum and the tree aloe (Aloe barberae).
l There was a distinct move towards naturalistic and romantic plantings this year. Hard landscaping elements were “softer” than the sleek paving and metal sheeting used in previous years – and there was a return to stone walling, rustic paving and still ponds found in nature.
The best example of the new naturalistic style of intermingled plantings was to be found in the romantic Laurent-Perrier Garden where dusky browns, bronzes and pinks (fennel, foxgloves and verbascum) were planned to create a romantic meadow beside a woodland stream.
l An ambience of yesteryear was present in many gardens with plantings reminiscent of old fashioned cottage-style plantings, country meadows and natural woodlands. A ramshackle garden entitled A Postcard from Wales did not look like much of a traditional garden, but the present mood for nostalgia meant that on-line voters rated it highly. Perhaps the somewhat neglected Welsh cottage garden recalled a time when life was simpler, less busy and less global.
l Behind every garden design at Chelsea this year was a discussion about living with global warming, planting for wildlife and biodiversity, harvesting water, recycling, and growing your own.
In the larger show gardens, vegetables, herbs and fruit trees intermingled among the flower beds. Space-saving vertical gardens are always a feature at Chelsea and this year a host of magnificent containers crammed with peppers, tomatoes, chillis and blackberries were on show in courtyard-size gardens. - Saturday Star
* To view all the Chelsea Flower Show gardens, visit www.rhs.org.uk/ShowsEvents/RHS-Chelsea-Flower-Show/2011/Gardens