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Garden designs at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2013 - a review by Tom Turner

Happy hundredth birthday! The first Chelsea Flower Show was held in 1913 and 2013 is its anniversary. For the show gardens, I do not think it was vintage year and the Duke of Wellington’s comment on Waterloo comes, appropriately, to mind: ‘They came on in the same old way and we stopped them in the same old way’. At Chelsea ‘they’ are the innovative designers and ‘we’ are an Unholy Alliance of design-illiterate clients and judges. ‘Forgive them’, O Lord, ‘for they know not what they do’. The Iron Duke also tried to block the passage of the 1832 Reform Act. At Chelsea, in 2013, the Alliance won. Visitors will come away muttering ‘Haven’t I see all this before?’ The Best in Show Garden, by Trailfinders, from Oz, is a welcome exception and I congratulate them. Since they tend to alternate good and bad designs we may be in for an unpleasant shock in the 2014 Chelsea Flower Show. Alan Titchmarsh comments that the show gardens ‘should inspire and fuel our own imaginations, rather in the manner of London Fashion Week, except that instead of Vivien Westwood and Tom Ford we have Ulf Nordfjell and Christopher Bradley-Hole’ (Show Catalogue p.57). But we don’t. The typical show garden on the Main Avenue looks as though it should have been designed in the 1960s (though the actual Chelsea gardens of the 1960s looked as though they belonged to the 1930s). The gardens in this category include Ulf Nordfjell’s Laurent-Perrier Garden, Christopher Bradley-Hole, Adam Frost, Robert Myers, Chris Beardshaw. Two of the exceptions to this generalisation are the designs by Jinny Blom and Roger Platts (both of which are very forgettable). Note: you may wish to explain the terseness of the below comments with the mild back pain which marred my enjoyment of the day. Below them, you will find two video interviews with designers of Fresh gardens (not on the Main Avenue).

 
Chelsea Flower Show 2013

Phil Johnson's Trailfinders deserved the Best in Show Award for its boldness. The design is not easy to classify and the best I can do is 'Pricean Picturesque'

 
Chelsea 2013
Chelsea 2013
Ulf Nordfjell, Laurent-Perrier Garden. Modernist geometry and some postmodern features - but unremarkable.
 
Chelsea Flower Show 2013
Chelsea Flower Show 2013
Christopher Bradley-Hole, Telegraph Garden. Modernist geometry - but unremarkable.
 
 
 

 

 
Chelsea Flower Show 2013
Chelsea Flower Show 2013
Robert Myers, Brewin Dolphin Garden. A good design - but not as good as 2012.
 
Chelsea 2013 Chelsea 2013

Chris Beardshaw, Arthritis Research Garden. The visible part of the garden harks back to the 1850s but the glazed outdoor room at the back is an attractive space. Too many hedges for an arthritis sufferer.

 
Chelsea Flower Show 2013
Chelsea Flower Show 2013

Jinny Blom, B&Q Sentebale Forget-Me-Not Garden. I have seen good designs from Jinny Blom but this is not one of them and I will try to forget it.

 
 
 
 
Roger Platts, M&G Centenary Garden ‘Windows through Time’. Dull and backward-looking.