The impossible made possible

Kathryn Bradley-Hole anticipates a confident return to form at Chelsea, with mouth-watering designs for productive gardens, aromatic Mediterranean planting and even a reinterpretation of the rock garden

- Kathryn Bradley-Hole

THE most recent shows at Chelsea revealed the great resilience and resourcefulness of British gardening, defying the challenges of health uncertainties and irregular supply chains. This year, expect to see increased buoyancy, with an energised, confident event of commendable variety—and even, perhaps, an emerging shift of emphasis.

Of late, we have become used to laissez-faire, pastoral sensibilities, with an abundance of shaggy hedgerows and flowery meadows. The wild-and-weedy look has gained ground incrementally at the show for many years. ‘Wildernesses’ will be there next week, but, this time, they’re strongly challenged by exhibits rooted in what constitutes a real garden. Shouldn’t it be a place for people, as well as plants and wild creatures?

One theme gaining momentum in real life is the productive garden, with enthusiasts across all age groups. In The Savills Garden, Mark Gregory interprets the trend with ‘a seasonal potager at a country hotel, combining beautiful ornamental and edible planting’. Occupying one of the largest plots, it has a small building on the boundary, with a kitchen leading into the garden, alongside a verandah-covered dining area. Its Yorkstone courtyard has margins of pretty flowers and a short run of crisp, stilt hedging in hornbeam. The potager occupies the second half of the garden, with a collection of small raised beds of vegetables, salads and herbs, set out next to a running ‘brook’ crossed by rustic stone bridges. Fruit includes espalier ‘step-over’ apples, a fan-trained pear tree, quince, figs and grapevines. The layout is informal and compact, but it would comfortably translate to many different home-garden settings.