null
close
close
close
Over 100 Furniture Sets On Display 5 Star Reviews Free Delivery Options

The 2019 Chelsea Flower Show: Sustainable Gardening

Posted by Marc on 6th Sep 2019

One of the biggest events for gardeners is here: the 2019 Chelsea Flower Show! One of the big talking points at this year's show was how our gardening choices can have important environmental and ecological benefits.

Here are a few of our top picks from this year’s show:

The trend this year was embracing informal planting designs with a naturalistic look. This dominated many of the biggest gardens. Prairie-style planting, with many flowers left to their grow and form their own design with unstructured edging, continues to grow in popularity. The best thing about this trend is that gardens with these plants are low maintenance, opting to plant those with long season interest such as Verbena Bonariensis and Erigeron Karvinskianus.

Meadow plants also make many appearances, such as Californian Poppies, Aquilegia, Geum, common Columbine & Eurphorbia, as do wildflowers, increasingly reflecting how gardeners are now opting for a countryside look in their own gardens.

Changing climate conditions highlights how biodiversity is important for gardeners to protect our landscapes as pests and diseases adapting to changing conditions. The 'Resilience Garden' is part of a year-long celebration of 100 years of forestry in Britain, including a wide range of trees that are both exotic and native, such as 43-foot giant Redwoods, the hardy Money Puzzle Tree, which can tolerate any soil type and the enduring, ancient Gingko Biloba.

The designer of this garden was Sarah Eberle, she was inspired by the pioneering Victorian gardener William Robinson who championed for wild gardening.

Sarah believes Robinson's idea of wild gardening can be realised even in the smallest spaces: ‘We have to be innovative and clever to make our landscapes and cities greener and give nature the space it needs to thrive.’

The M&G garden this year shows a biodiverse range of plant species from around the world that can be grown in the British climate. Many of the plants in the garden have never been seen at the Chelsea flower show, demonstrating how it is possible to regenerate & colonise spaces with new growth. This garden showcases contracting textures from trees and ferns, which engulfed the garden in shades of green, while allowing a pop of colour from diverse plants.

Andy Sturgeon who is an award-winning designer, who designed the M&G garden, said ‘I wanted to show how plants can colonise a landscape and create something new and beautiful,’

Among the trees and plants that appear in the garden are Equisetum, Restios, Nothofagus Antartica, Carpinus Betulus, Gunnera Killipiana, Epiolobium, Arisaema and Disproposis Bodinieri.

The Savills and David Harber Garden include biodiverse large trees and an incredible green wall that filters pollution from the air. It also features a water purifying wetland area and permeable surface. This garden showcased sustainable element that can be incorporated into any garden, even city-dwelling gardeners can do their bit to help the environment.

The future of urban farming was reimagined in collaboration between Ikea and designer Tom Dixon. The Manchester garden featured thousands of plants that are edible, medicinal and have beneficial qualities that can be grown in limited spaces. This garden wanted to explore the use of production planting in urban areas, which includes plants to clean and improve urban soul and the potential of planting for managing water through sustainable drainage systems.

As the world is rapidly changing it is important to try and do our bit for the environment. Have you changed any garden habits or incorporated anything like these garden int your own? Let us know!

to top