
Thursday, October 27, 2011
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Kiwi plant scores at Chelsea

The winning Plant of the Year 2011 was an anemone (Anemone 'Wild Swan') which had a lovely drift of white nodding flowers with a blue reverse. But my personal favourite finalist was the tropical pitcher plant, Nepenthes 'Princess'. It's a hybrid of N. ventricosa and N. mira and it's named after Kate Middleton - in fact the breeders, Borneo Exotics, are waiting to hear if they can officially name this cultivar Nepenthes 'Princess William of Wales'. Kate Middleton's getting so many plants named after her (as I mentioned there's also a 'William and Catherine' rose and a 'William and Catherine' sweetpea) she'll soon be able to have her very own tribute bed in Anglesey. The flowers are all very well, but the carnivorous nepenthes will give her some real horticultural street cred.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
2011 Chelsea Flower Show: Key Trends

I have to agree about the water features. Nearly every garden at Chelsea this year features water in some capacity. It's lucky it's not swimming weather though (I am sitting in my hotel writing this by the light of the lightning strikes, English summer anyone?) since no one's done anything as predictable as just put a pool in: these are water features with cultural resonance or biological metaphorical significance.
The Australian Garden presented by the Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne has a billabong-type pond shaped like a hunting boomerang in fact the whole garden is designed to reflect the

While there were wildflowers everywhere, it seems to me that the real trend at Chelsea wasn't planting wildflowers but planting for wildlife. Bees, bugs, birds, garden designers were trying to attract them all. Not just by planting, in fact, but by building. I saw three gardens that contained bug hotels including a nine storey Insect Hilton in the B&Q Garden (it's the tallest display garden in Chelsea history) which looked considerably nicer than my own hotel. The RBC New Wild Garden had integrated bug habitats into its dry stone walls and the outside of the recycled shipping container that was the garden's central structure (there's that "garden office" trend). No wonder both gardens were positively humming with bees. I guess the news of a cheap London hotel room was bound to get around.


2011 Chelsea Flower Show: New Plants


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