Chelsea - Robert Myers' Cancer Research Surviving Garden

Planting is key to the concept. The designer has selected plants that survive arid and salty conditions, and graded a progresssion of planting areas that become softer and lusher as shelter is reached. The surviving concept is also explored in incised stone poem panels.  Key hard landscaping: irregular seaside gravel, stone walling, rendered wall and limestone steps and paths. Very thoughtful and made with care.

trees: tamarisk, cordyline, trachycarpus; key herbaceous: valerian

masterly finishing

colour of rendered wall - perfect

Chelsea - Wong and Cubero Malaysian Courtyard Garden

Geometry, water, lush planting and a beautifully finished limestone - this is a very strong, breath-taking design. The most sophisticated garden in the show, and curiously under the radar, despite its gold medal. Some of my Chelsea pictures were used in Landscape magazine’s July edition, pp38 - 39

Spheres and circles at Chelsea

I overheard the stand owner explaining that a famous singer-songwriter had snapped up this hanging cocoon. What a great place to concentrate and be creative.

Allium 'Round and Purple' - says it all

Tom Stogdon's slate and pebble sculptures are really special, http://www.tomstogdon.com/

I had more images but doing layout on blogger with more than two images seriously damages your health - any tips anyone?

The Key - food plants for form, texture and colour

It was most enjoyable to study the clever planting in this garden at Chelsea. Edibles were mixed with herbaceous perennials and structural shrubs in an original way, and with full attention to form, texture and colour. In this picture (left) box balls, Ricinis communis (palmate leaves in centre), spiky eryngium, oriental poppies, lillies, cabbage, kale and orache make a beautiful composition in blues, purples, glaucous green and mid-green. It's all too closely planted to be sustainable (as show gardens are) but provides inspiration for borders at home. Plantlist: http://www.edenproject.com/documents/MicrosoftWord-KEYGARDENPLANTINGLIST.pdf

The garden echoes a homeless individual's life journey. Dean Stalham's poem is painted on columns that represent the breach from hard journey to a place of health, growth and stability. Brass doorkeys glitter in the bark mulch path.

I particularly like the placement of the pillars in relation to the deck, the angle at which the raised bed is placed and the rows of veg within it. It all looks 'off', no right angles or 45 degrees. To me, it conveys the awkward reality of a fresh start but it works well and is pleasing.

I admire the job Paul Stone, the designer, has done. Over a hundred people contributed to the garden: homeless individuals, those recovering from substance misuse, and prisoners. Read more, http://keygarden.com/

Sarah Eberle's Credit Crunch Garden

The path here generated a great deal of interest at Chelsea this week. I 'manned' the garden one day and fielded a lot of queries about it. The idea is that the owner of this garden is an overdrawn artist, short on money but with lots of time and creativity. She has sourced these walkway grills from a scrap yard for £10 each and used ends of bags of different coloured aggregate (gravel) to fill each square, mosaic-style. London buildings are represented. At the front is the Royal Hospital (site of the Chelsea Flower Show). I also found Battersea Power Station and St Paul's Cathedral, but not the Gherkin!

I like the way this simple design element (the grill) has been used on different levels and planes - for the floor, the steps and decorative panels on the wall to the right. It's great how money has been saved on hard landscaping (I counted 15 grills) leaving more for plants.

I also like the use of herbs and fruit in with mixed planting. There's a vine and a gooseberry bush at the front, borage and woad on the right, and there was also oregano and mint. Productive planting is a good trend and represents a return to the origins of cottage gardening - ornamental and edible together. In the designer's narrative, the artist was selling herbs and berries in an honesty box by the front gate.

This designer normally does far grander gardens but was asked to step in only in March as Flemings from Australia had had to pull out when their nursery had been destroyed in bush fires. http://www.saraheberle.com/

Post-glacial cool

Black-framed ultra-designed pavillion, icy white stone blocks scattered as if by a retreating glacier.

Eremurus 'Joanna' requires full sun.

Ulf Nordfjell's Chelsea Best in Show http://telegraph.co.uk/rhschelsea

Dreamtime

The iridescence of these peony petals is fascinating. The planting here with its moody colours, the mix of shiny and feathery, and of rounded and spiky is absorbing. The sharp geometry of the evergreens and hard landscaping create the feeling of a dream.

Chelsea Gold-winning garden:
Paeonia 'Buckeye Belle'
Iris 'Black Swan'
Deschampsia cespitosa (grass mid-left)
Foeniculum vulgare 'Giant Bronze' (fennel)
Salvia nemorosa 'Caradonna' (blue spikes to the front)
Astrantia major (buttons of flowers to right and bottom left)
Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster' (grass in a row at the back)

In a real garden you would need to add a range of plants to have colour beyond May. The calamagrostis, or arrow grass, has particularly good year-round value, with upright flower heads and a height of 1.8m in late summer. It retains good form when dead and buff coloured, only needing shearing down in February. From now on it has lovely movement in the breeze and soft whispering (the designer has located a seat behind it).

See the garden more fully and hear the designer, Luciano Giubbilei, talk about the interrelation of the different elements http://www.bbc.co.uk/chelsea/show_gardens/laurent.shtml