Form and Texture - Two more from Tom Stuart-Smith at Wisley

This great green block of planting inspires me to really go for leaf texture. It also reminds me to have the courage to show restraint in the number of plants in a scheme. There are the designer's signature columns providing structure (here, not quite evergreen, as they are beech, but the brown leaves will remain through winter), and allowed to go straggly. The Allium seedheads almost look better, I bet, than when they were a haze of purple balls floating above the swishy waves of grass. I am not sure what grass this is or what its flowers will look like. I'll just have to go back. This apparently simple planting creates a powerful genius loci, or spirit of the place, outside the new glass house.


This small composition is also thrilling: spikes of Eremurus, floating plates of Achillea, a fan of Iris, and a haze of Stipa tenuissima.










Update: the grass is Hakonechloa macra, Japanese Forest Grass, which is often grown in its variegated form, 'Aureola'. T S-S apparently won't use variegated forms, though I have been told that some imp did sneak in one of the vulgar yellow-striped miscreants.

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

A 'soft' day in an English May garden

Last week garden designer Charles Rutherfoord opened his Clapham garden to the public. There was a soft rain and the sky was overcast, and this allowed the colours of blooms to glow a little more. Here (left) you can see tulips just about to go over, and irises in the foreground ready to take their turn. Visitors were softened and awed by the loveliness of this urban garden.