From embracing buttercups to candy-coloured planting, these are the highlights of this year’s show.
1 Go green
Green was the dominant theme at Chelsea, literally and metaphorically. Main Avenue, home to the major show gardens, was awash with broad-leaved trees among a calming palette of green, pale yellow and white flowers, including swathes of cow parsley, euphorbias and meadowsweet. Andy Sturgeon’s M&G garden was a masterclass in the green sanctuary: echo the look in your own garden by underplanting a hornbeam, elder or field maple with the green-flowered Mathiasella bupleuroides, marsh spurge (Euphorbia palustris), Californian poppy ‘Ivory Castle’ and airy grass Melica altissima‘Alba’. For shadier spots, try an angelica (A. archangelica) underplanted with pachysandra and rodgersias.
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2 Reclaim and recycle
From an ecological point of view, parts of Chelsea finally seemed to be waking up to the issue of sustainability. Chris Beardshaw’s Morgan Stanley garden was a valiant attempt to minimise the environmental impact of a Chelsea plot, from carrying out groundworks using an electric excavator (instead of a diesel engine), to growing plants in recyclable taupe pots.
But if you’re looking for a practical take-home, look no further than Jilayne Rickards’ garden for the Campaign for Female Education. Although lots of the plants on display wouldn’t normally grow in the UK, a water-wise raised bed system could work for growing food anywhere. It’s made from reclaimed brick with a rubble-filled reservoir at its base fed by rainwater or grey water (from household chores such as washing), while crop rotation helps keep the soil fertile.
3 Let it grow
Ragged robin turned up in more than one plot this year, along with a few other plants many gardeners may be hell-bent on removing: there were buttercups in Andrew Duff’s Savills and David Harber garden, a clover lawn on Laurélie de la Salle’s Harmonious Garden of Life, and a whole host of natives on Mark Gregory’s Welcome to Yorkshire garden. It’s certainly time to look at what thrives when we let our gardens run wild. Try just mowing a path across your grass, and see what pops up on either side.
4 Be brave with your trees
In years past, a single tree has dominated Chelsea, from the multi-stemmed birch to the gnarled olive. It seems 2019 is the year of the monkey puzzle (Araucaria araucana), which showed up in Jonathan Snow’s Undiscovered Latin America garden, and Sarah Eberle’s Resilience garden for the Forestry Commission. The sinuous trunk of the pine (Pinus nigra) in Chris Beardshaw’s garden was a showstopper, too. Assuming you don’t have room for a huge pine, take another leaf out of Beardshaw’s book and plant a red buckeye (Aesculus pavia), a small multi-stemmed tree with clusters of red tubular flowers that are a magnet for bees.
5 Bring out the copper
Hammered copper has been around as an interiors trend for a while, and now popped up here, in Helen Elks-Smith’s Warner’s Distillery garden as a copper-clad green roof and water feature; and in a raised bed clad in coppered hammer in David Neale’s Silent Pool Gin garden.
This isn’t a cheap material, so bring the trend to your garden by adding accents such as rustic copper birdbaths from London Garden Trading (£79.95), or a Charlie metallic plant pot from Hortology (from £9.99).