Our Head Gardener Matt Collins on his favourite plants from this year’s Chelsea Flower Show:
In recent years, my attendance of the annual Chelsea Flower Show, as a spectator, has reverted to the older model: the enthusiast in search of plant — rather than planting — inspiration. Much like the crowds who once flocked around the nursery exhibits of the giant floral marquee during the 1950s (before the advent of the ‘show garden’ proper), I arrive ready to be intoxicated by plants previously unknown to me, or cultivars newly introduced. This has lent to a far less considered wander around the show in general. When once I might have spent the majority of my visit digesting the intricately designed gardens along Main Avenue, and come away fizzing with schemes comprising perennial and ephemeral material, I now dawdle in something of a daze, much like a nectar-hungry bee, drawn indiscriminately from flower to flower: from the ‘Show’, ‘Balcony’ and ‘Sanctuary’ gardens to the exhibits in the Great Pavilion alike; from the set-dressings of a corporate-sponsored drinks tent, even, to the borage beside the bins… Amidst an overwhelming volume of plant material — increasingly overwhelming, I find — a kind of merry stupefaction takes hold, as the notebook gradually fills with a gardener’s wish list.
1. Colutea ‘Copper Beauty’
As my penchant for hardy, sun-loving, exceedingly drought-tolerant species continues to swell, it would be odd not to favour at least one plant in this category. Coming to designer Ann-Marie Powell’s rich-hued ‘Urban Community Wildlife Garden’, which took inspiration from the legacy of urban green spaces champion (and National Trust co-founder) Octavia Hill, I was drawn instantaneously to the mesmerising tear-drop pea flowers of Colutea ‘Copper Beauty’. A medium-height shrub from southern Europe with compound, robinia-like leaves, its rust-orange blooms apparently yield fat, reddened (and, later, translucent) seed pods in late summer.
2. Ribwort plantain
Inside the Great Pavilion it was a joy to see UK wildflowers championed as garden-worthy plants for cultivation (another horticultural penchant of mine). Collaborating with organic perfume maker Ffern and garden designer Tabi Jackson Gee, Kent Wildflower Seeds put everyday wildflower species on a pedestal, and in doing so exhibited their remarkable ornamental qualities. I could have just as easily picked a vetch or clover as a favourite, but for its clutch of elegantly slender stems, ribwort plantain (Plantago lanceolata) stood proudly above the rest.
3. Sarracenia ‘Jonny Marr’
I might have overlooked Hampshire Carnivorous Plants’ dinosaur-accompanied stand of speckled pink, ruby-blush and creamy yellow pitcher plants in the pavilion had I not just encountered sarracenias growing wild in Virginia. As is so often the case with my botanical interests, it takes an up-close experience to turn my eye to a particular plant — all the better if experienced in their natural surroundings — and pitchers are now very much my wheelhouse. All the more so when they are 1. An unreal shade of ‘lung’-red, and 2. Named for one of the very few enduringly cool ‘guitar legends’…
4. Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris)
Conifers have made their mark as feature trees within Chelsea gardens in years past, but I don’t think they can ever be over-promoted (one year someone is going to conceive an all-conifer garden and blow us all away. Designers: do it, I dare you…). The mature pines of Miria Harris’s ‘Garden for Recovery’, designed for the Stroke Association, were intrinsically commanding, but also integral in conveying the garden’s underlying theme. A stroke survivor herself, Miria’s pines were recovered from an abandoned nursery field, and stood as symbols of resilience in the face of trauma. Her chosen trees were a combination of Scots and mountain pine, and the use of the former was a reminder of how attractive and uniquely-shaped the UK-native Scots pine can be.
5. Saruma henryi
I’d barely set foot in the show ground before the words ‘saruma henryi’ began resounding from every corner. A magnetic feature of both Tom Stuart-Smith and Ula Maria’s show gardens, this was undoubtedly the ‘people’s choice’ plant this year (never mind the official Chelsea Plant of the Year selection, Prunus ‘Starlight’). A spreading perennial of supposedly ‘dry’ shade (that ever maddening combo) bearing sweetly diminutive, three-petalled flowers that are the right side of yellow, Saruma henryi adds something exciting yet understated to the category of ‘leafy underplanting’, forming soft mounds with its cordate, brunnera-like leaves. I can see this becoming an urban favourite in future years.
6. Melick grass (Melica uniflora)
Lastly, and speaking of both shady understory plants and of garden designer Ula Maria, my final favourite has to be the equally low-lying yet sparkling shade grass, Melica uniflora. Asked what she felt was one of the successes of her ‘Forest bathing’ garden (which, unsurprisingly but very pleasingly, won Best in Show), Ula told me it would have to be the repeat plantings of wood melick. She had this clump-forming grass running more or less throughout the garden, knitting it together and enabling feature plants to ‘pop’ — the salmon-tinged martagon lilies (pictured), for example, or the frill-edged, bright white campion species Silene fimbriata (also pictured). Yes, that’s the shimmering melick just below both plants, lighting them from beneath like raindrops caught in a sunburst.