Archive for May, 2008
Style oddities - the garden stumpery
May 29th, 2008Something that showed up in a variety of forms at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, was the stumpery. There was a stunning one made of silver birch trees and stumps, and another that combined a ‘planted wall’ with logs laid end on to show their grain, and interplanted with woodland perennials.
You may be wondering what […]
Chelsea Flower Show round-up
May 26th, 2008One gold medal winner caused a minor incident by correcting Prince’s Philops’s pronunciation! Jamie Durie, an Australian horticulturist, was immediately told ‘I don’t want a bloody lecture’ by the famously irascible Prince, but Durie is relaxed about the situation, and still enjoying his gold medal.
The Cayman Islands exhibited for the first time, and found the […]
Theme gardens
May 23rd, 2008The concept of theme gardens is an increasing source of income for garden designers, but this idea doesn’t have to be limited to those with bottomless pockets. Theme gardens offer a new focus and can bring pleasure to the job of revitalising a boring or overgrown landscape.  Some theme gardens stress the use of plants: […]
The best of Chelsea
May 20th, 2008Well, it’s always going to be a subjective assessment – there are a thousand ways to judge Chelsea Flower Show and my way may not be yours, but a real design departure this year has been the Good Gifts garden. It was sponsored by a charity that supports war-torn communities around the world by inviting […]
Furniture rules
May 18th, 2008It’s ironic that at a time when we are all working longer, and quite possibly tightening our belts in fear of recession, garden furniture is becoming ever more luxurious.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps knowing that there is a glorious green space waiting, even if we can’t be in it, is one of the things that allows […]
Chelsea Flower Show uproar
May 16th, 2008Jane Owen of the Times is up in arms about some of this year’s stallholders, like Manolo Blahnik. Who? I hear you ask. Well yes, I wouldn’t expect regular readers of this blog to know Manolo and his £1,000 stiletto shoes, but there you are, he has a stall at Chelsea this year, selling shoes. […]
Water, water, everywhere … garden style – fountains
May 12th, 2008Everybody is drawn to the stress-reducing beauty of water, its movement, the gentle sounds of flowing water that wash away our irritations and the hypnotic effect of the shadows and lights that it creates with foliage. Babies sleep better when they can hear running water, adults find it easier to relax near it and it […]
Garden disasters
May 8th, 2008If your next door neighbours are into DIY it may be time to check insurance, not yours, but theirs! It seems that last year, neighbours caused £173 million of damage to next door properties after home improvement disasters spilt over the garden fence. The range of problems spanned water cascading into neighbouring properties through pierced […]
Peace and quiet, garden style
May 5th, 2008We all have busy and pressured lives, and any woman’s magazine or self-help book you pick up will tell you that getting outside and reconnecting with nature is vital to our wellbeing – but what do you do if outside is noisy, overlooked or just not very private? Very few of us can relax when we […]
Garden style trends predicted
May 2nd, 2008The world famous Chelsea Flower Show is almost upon us. Between 20 and 24 May, the world’s most influential designers and plantspeople will be preening and pruning and strutting their stuff – and the ideas the Gold Medal winners come up with will be adopted high street and online retailers within weeks, giving us all […]
