Winning Garden at Chelsea by Dan Pearson for Chatsworth

Yesterday I was lucky enough to be offered a ticket to Chelsea Flower Show, a gardener’s Mecca. Although I don’t actually have a garden I do have an allotment and a large windowsill / ledge; large enough for a dwarf apple tree. I dropped Erbie at school and whizzed off to Sloane Square tube to follow the hoards on their way to the flower show housed in the Royal Hospital Chelsea, home of the Chelsea Pensioners.

It was amazing, for a novice and so much to see. I flitted around like a newly emerged butterfly and managed to take over 500 pictures in the process; finishing with a glass of Laurent-Perrier champagne then back to pick Erbie up from school at 3.30pm. Result!

One of my favourite gardens was Dan Pearson’s: The Laurent Perrier Champagne Garden. Dan is a firm believer in naturalistic gardening and having been absent for a few years, says this will be his last garden at Chelsea.

His inspiration was drawn from Chatsworth House, particularly the trout stream and rockery. The garden was set in a crossroads, just before the BBC filming area and unmissable with a huge outcrop of rock jutting out over the pathway.

I love, love, loved it and some parts were so naturalistic the comment: ‘weeds I normally try and get rid of’ was overheard more than once. I had a special leap in my heart as it contained one of my favourite ‘weeds’; and in a colour I had noticed over the past two years growing on a front garden path just up the road. I kept meaning to ask if I could take one, but then this year it wasn’t there. Dan Pearson did you get your white Herb Robert from a front garden in North London?!

Enough of my piffle, here are a few pics of Dan Pearson’s Chelsea garden (don’t worry not all 500 of them).

The rocky outcrop

The gorgeous (in my opinion) white Herb Robert in the Chelsea over-all-winner Laurent-Perrier Chatsworth Garden - I’d love to know where you got this from Dan!

White Herb Robert. 

Herb Robert in white.

Another of my favourite flowers, which used to grow in my mum’s garden - Solomon’s Seal Polygonatum x hybridum AGM, with it’s white drop flowers dipped in green strung on a leafy arc. Polygonatum in many several versions was popular at Chelsea this year and I hope to see it making a come back in our gardens.

Miniature Solomon’s Seal in the rockery 

The naturalistic approach in the foreground. A weed is only a weed if it is in the wrong place if it is in the intended place -  it’s called planting... That’s my kinda gardening.

Naturalist approach

The naturalistic approach in the fore at the over-all winning garden of Chelsea

Pops of white I think these may be some kind of Ranunculus or more familiarly a white buttercup.

Ranunculus?

 After the rockery at Chatsworth, here in the garden at Chelsea Flower Show 2015.

There were also a lot of lacy white umbellifers in the gardens at Chelsea this year from the giant Angelica to this petite Cow Parsley.

A tiny form of Cow Parsley

 A lovely shrub - with dusky pink bell flowers and leaves that turn a fiery red before dropping in the Autum - Enkianthus campanulatus AGM

Enkianthus campanulatus AGM

Lovely planting of narcissus coming up through the grass alongside red campion, which we’d go looking for at a certain roadside in Wiltshire after the bluebells had finished flowering.

Ferns amongst the grasses, this spiky one is: Matteuccia struthiopteris AGM

Grasses and fern in the Laurent-Perrier Chatsworth Garden at Chelsea 

Yep this IS part of a garden at Chelsea!

 A sculptural tree stump behind a yellow azalea Rhododendron lutem which is a non-native species.

Laurrent-Perrier Chatsworth Garden, Chelsea 2015

Pops of red from delicate tulips in the grass in the grass behind a delicate dog rose.

Laurrent-Perrier Chatsworth Garden, Chelsea 2015

Briar rose

Dan also used a beautiful white forget-me-not, I had a feeling they’d get in there somewhere, I shall do a post on my personal round up of Chelsea flowers of the moment soon. But for now I leave you with a Hawthorn tree.

Chelsea Flower Show 2015

Don’t ask, don’t get.

I made this postcard to send to the local allotment site manager requesting a plot and it worked, I’m now on the waiting list. Number 204 but at least I’m on it!

A Call To Arms

I’m not usually a political activist but what with the new government planning to sell off our forests and local councils having to cut funding for bedding plants and greenhouses. I call upon you to arm yourselves - with these flower grenades £11.50 for three from The Balcony Gardener, and you shall have buttercups and poppies wherever you go.

RHS Wisley

Joojoo invited Erbie and I for a daytrip in her new car. I carried Erbie on my hip down to South London, carrying the child seat - (not as bad as it sounds, they’re very light and the tube is virtually door to door.), We set off early on a bright clear Autumn morning at the end of September, Erbie napping in the back to Wisley, near Woking. I can’t believe I’ve never been before. We spent the whole day there and still didn’t manage to see everything.

Wisley morning September 2009 : WEM

And of course, it being a RHS garden everything is labeled. So if you see a plant you like, such as this lovely Sedum Erbie was pulling as I took the picture, you can note it down (for when, if ever, I get a garden!).

Why WEM Why?

Our visit coincided with a sculpture trail:

Orange spots denote sold so there will be a few gardens with this foxy, I wonder if he’d work as a cat scarer?

We had a several cups of tea from accompanied by rather lovely carrot cake and a beetroot cake, Erbie tried both, well stole a lot of both actually. I especially liked the greenhouse. It started with an amazing collection of orchids and pitcher plants.

Pitcher plants are carnivorous, they entice insects with pheromones, who then fall into and their water filled cavities and drown to be ingested as soupy nutrients. Joojoo said ‘carnivorous plants always look like men’s bits – seducing innocent insects in’!

At the other side of the great glasshouse were the succulents and cacti.

I especially liked the prairie meadow behind the greenhouse.

Posting pictures of flowers makes me smile.