What to see: the best gardens at Hampton Court Flower Show 2018
It’s big and it’s hot, but the world’s largest flower show, RHS Hampton Court, is the place to be this week for sheer spectacle.
Over the next six days 140,000 visitors will flock to the 34 acres around Hampton Court Palace in west London to admire show gardens and plants and get ideas for their own outdoor spaces.
Show gardens celebrating the return of the Busy Lizzie, a very slick outdoor bar and a colourful Chilean vineyard take Gold medals while the Mr Men hill and Piet Oudolf’s meadow of flowers will have everyone reaching for their camera phones.
Meat hooks in a show garden? Don’t miss Conscious Consumerism, exploring the impact of animal agriculture on deforestation – creepy and powerful.
Or lose yourself in a rusted steel box where waving grasses and flowers are reflected in an endless meadow of mirrors.
WHAT TO SEE AT HAMPTON COURT FLOWER SHOW
Best in Show
Busy Lizzies have been off the shelves in recent years due to a problem with downy mildew, but B&Q have bred a disease resistant strain and this lovely garden celebrates their colourful return, mixing them with emerald tropical plants and smart paving to give them a modern makeover in the B&Q Bursting Busy Lizzie Garden.
Best in Show. Show Gardens, Gold medal.
Telling the story of the British countryside in one garden is no mean feat but Ann-Marie Powell packs in meadows, coast, the Scottish Highlands, the Yorkshire Dales and woodlands of Northern Wales in Countryfile’s 30th Anniversary Garden.
Feature Garden.
Disagree with your partner over gardening styles?
Designer Rosemary Coldstream has the solution with Best of Both Worlds in which one half of the garden is a contemporary space of straight lines, topiary and sculpture, the other a soft courtyard of multistem trees, flowering plants and circles divided by a pleached hornbeam hedge.
Clever idea, but how long do we give the marriage?
Show Gardens, Gold medal.
EDIBLE GARDENS NOT TO MISS
Santa Rita ‘Living La Vida 120’ Garden is Irishman Alan Rudden’s first UK show garden and he’s celebrating a Gold medal for his inviting take on a Chilean vineyard garden packed with succulents, cacti and agapanthus.
Show Gardens, Gold medal.
Former head gardener at Raymond Blanc’s Manoir aux Quat’Saisons and Soho Farmhouse, Anna Greenland makes her show debut with a mini treasure trove for picklers and preservers in Herbs for Preserves outside the Dig In marquee.
In only 3x3m, there’s inspiration here for urban gardeners in this pretty outdoor larder with ingredients for pestos, vinegars, oxymels (medicinal vinegar and honey extractions) and quick pickles using coriander, basils, fennel and other herb plants.
Don’t miss Greenland’s demonstration in the Dig In Live Cookery Theatre on Wednesday 4 July at 11.30am showing how you can make skincare salves with marigolds, medicinal spoonfuls of turmeric, ginger, garlic and rosemary for colds.
Vegetable growers will love the Dig In marquee where herbs, fruit trees and vegetable plants are displayed in great style.
Discerning herb growers will love the amazing variety on show from Hooks Green Herbs, from Korean mint to Tangerine sage, while Plants 4 Presents showcase house plants you can eat, from citrus trees to ginger to cardamom and turmeric.
The Garlic Farm fills the tent with an enticing scent with a great display of bulbs to browse and buy.
Worried about blight on your tomatoes this year? Pennard Plants’ new Happy Days tomato is resistant and there will be plants for sale at their stand.
The Borough Market Kitchen Garden has peas growing in a shopping till and nasturtiums on a bicycle as well as crates packed with salad, kale, aubergine, tomatoes and physalis in a wonderful recreation of a market stall.
The Landform Garden Bar by Rhiannon Williams mixes sleek stone, golden foxtail lilies and stylish furniture to create an inspirational oasis for anyone with a small garden in need of a refreshing drink after work.
The timber clad, stone-topped bar is surrounded by lush, green and white planting while the sunny seating area in the corner is full of colourful flowers in tones of yellow and orange.
Lifestyle Gardens, Gold medal.
Anton Chekhov, when not writing plays such as The Cherry Orchard, was also a medical doctor and would treat his patients with herbs in the garden of his dacha outside Moscow.
This charming garden designed by Hannah Gardener and Anna Benn recreates the garden and packs it with Russian herbs from Siberian ginseng and tarragon to hypericum and marshmallow.
There’s even a hayrick. No cherry trees though – that would have been too literal says Gardner – who planted apple trees instead.
Show Gardens, Silver medal.
ARTISTIC GARDENS
A meteor has crashed to earth, shattering paving and scorching plants. This was the idea behind Element Mystique, a collaboration between designer Lawrence Roberts and Belgian sculptor William Roobrouck.
Show Gardens, Silver-gilt medal.
A rusted steel box hides an eternity of beauty in the Apeiron: The Dibond Garden where clouds of gypsophila, waving spires, umbels and wafty grasses are reflected ad infinitum in its mirrored walls. Lovely.
Conceptual Gardens, Silver-Gilt medal.
GARDENS FOR MODERN LIFE
Polly Wilkinson used to be a counsellor and was inspired to design her garden A Very Modern Problem because of the number of her clients troubled by anxiety over social media.
"I’m a huge user of social media but we need to look at how to use it mindfully," she says.
"People have such ‘fomo’ – fear of missing out – and friendships are made and broken on what you do and don’t ‘like’ on apps like Instagram and Whatsapp."
Her garden is split by a large smartphone with a ‘real’ garden on one side and a ‘perfect’ garden on the other.
The ‘real’ side comes complete with unmown grass, a kids plastic trike, a wonky washing line and plants with their labels still on, while the other has immaculate paving, an Instagrammable hanging chair, fake plants, box "which will probably get blight or caterpillars and die but looks good" and a non-hardy type of agave chosen by Wilkinson because it "wouldn’t last the winter". Full of fun details.
Gardens for a Changing World, Silver-gilt medal.
A lush tropical forest with the sound of birdsong leads to an arid area of sawn down trees and then a chilling abattoir with blood spatter and meat hooks before you reach the final section – bare earth, a dead tree and silence.
This is Conscious Consumerism by first-time designer Joseph Gibson and it doesn’t hold back in its indictment of the effect of animal agriculture on deforestation.
Gardens for a Changing World, Gold medal.
Alexandra Noble’s Health and Wellbeing Garden is an enticing courtyard of rills, pools and cobbles with clouds of umbellifers that seem to float above it.
At 8x8m, it’s one many with small gardens could take inspiration from.
The curving path leading to a camomile bench has no obvious beginning and end and all the plants have healing properties.
Lifestyle Gardens, Silver medal.
FAMILY FRIENDLY GARDENS
Above a white picket fence, a hill and a house are split in two in the Mr Men garden.
Kids will love The Children with Cancer UK: Mr Happy, Mr Worry Hill and adults will be instantly dragged back to their childhood picture books.
Show Gardens, Silver medal.
Lilly Gomm has imagined her The Family Garden as that wilder bit at the end of a terraced garden where the kids play.
The lawn is long, there’s a wicker pear pod playhouse and simple log seats.
The huge wildlife wall packed with sawn off logs drilled with holes for masonry bees has three tunnels underneath so wildlife can come in and out of the garden.
Cirsium and oregano bring in pollinators and canopy plants cover the ground for foraging animals.
Lifestyle Gardens, Silver-Gilt medal.