Chelsea Flower Show 2015 - the Plews View | Garden Design Inspiration

Are you still enjoying Chelsea Flower Show 2015? Like to see some photos from the Plews perspective? In fact you could say that this is the low-down on Chelsea Flower Show 2015 – the Plews view being Marie and Hari – who are no more than 5 foot tall 😉

Chelsea Flower Show 2015 – the Plews View – the Great Pavilion

This huge tent is bigger in area than the space taken up by all of the original Chelsea Flower Show. It replaced in 2000, the earlier large canvas marquee; which was cut up and turned into over 7,000 handbags, jackets and aprons, by the Old Chelsea Marquee Company.

First up in our tour of the Great Pavilion (all three acres of it) was the Plant of the Year 2015.

The Winner of Plant of the Year 2015, Viburnum plicatum f. tomentosum ‘kilimanjaro sunrise’, bred by Burncoose nurseries; very pretty, a more compact form of Viburnum, so good for all those town gardens

In second place was Streptocarpus ‘polka dot purple, bred by Dibleys nurseries.’. Sometimes referred to as ’African violets’, Streptocarpus make lovely, floriferous house plants.

In third place was Salvia ‘love and kisses’, bred by Dysons nurseries. Marie loves Salvias so spent some time adoring this one.

The Great Pavilion had other treats in store –

Protea on stalks in the 40 years at Chelsea display by Kirstenboch, the South African National Biodiversity Institute.

National Collections of Iris and Dahlia from members of Plant Heritage. Hari adores Dahlias so spent some time here. Quite rightly there were some absolutely stunning blooms; all the more impressive as they wouldn’t normally be this far advanced, being late summer flowers.

And the ripe ‘Chelsea Pensioner’ strawberries were very tempting!

Chelsea Flower Show 2015 – the Plews View – the Gardens

The Chelsea gardens, that is to say, the large show gardens and also the fresh gardens and the artisan gardens, are always worth viewing from as many different angles as possible. We like to do two circuits of the gardens – if only because at our height we don’t always get close enough the first time round! It does mean we get to spot a planting combination or a particular flower, or a joke that the designer snuck in, that we missed the first time.

Sentebale Garden, the waterfall

A different sort of white garden – Beauty of Islam garden

The Chatsworth Garden, featured rocks and plants from the Chatsworth garden and estate in Derbyshire. The rockery shown here was originally created and built at Chatsworth by Joseph Paxton, the creator of the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London – not a million miles away from Chelsea Flower Show.

Perfumier garden

Harrods scent garden – less scented than the perfumier garden of course!

The Morgan Stanley Healthy Cities garden, designed by Chris Beardshaw, was a particular favourite. The purples of lupins and iris mixed with pink geraniums and then a zap of orange and all contained within box hedging: lovely.

The year 2015 sees various anniversaries, including the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215, the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, and the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Whilst it was a pity not to see an Agincourt garden, the other two were inspirations for a show garden and an artisan garden.

Living Legacy Garden; Battle of Waterloo

Magna Carta garden with red roses and willow edged raised beds.

The Dark Matter garden reminded us that views through a garden are important – and that a steam punk garden would be rather cool to create

Whilst garden shows like RHS Chelsea can be wonderful sources of inspiration, for our own gardens and for those we design for others, it must be remembered that they are, by their very nature a snapshot of a garden. When a client says ‘I’d like a garden like that’ of a Chelsea Flower Show garden or even of a picture in a magazine, it’s one of my tasks as a garden designer to remind them that if all the flowers bloom in May they’ll have very little of the colour they want in their garden and flower borders come August. My other task of course is to help them realise that dream of a paradise garden for themselves.