A few weeks before this year’s Chelsea Flower Show someone at the show’s organisers, the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), was quoted in the media saying that we all need to treat weeds as friends to be nurtured in our gardens, not enemies to be rooted out.
The situation was given further publicity because the President of the RHS is none other than Mr Keith Weed. So would 2023 see Chelsea Flower Show, the world’s most prestigious horticultural stage, turn out to be a weed fest?
Emphatically not. The healing powers of plants and nature were both evident and a constant talking point, and there were some inspirationally conceived show gardens whose unkempt, natural state powerfully projected the challenging and sometimes bleak messaging of the charities that the gardens represented; in particular Cleve West’s garden for Centrepoint which supports homeless people and Darren Hawkes’ garden for the Samaritans which supports those at risk of suicide.
But there were also sublimely crafted gardener’s gardens with exquisitely arranged planting, in particular Sarah Price’s garden, which celebrated the gorgeous bearded irises bred by artist Cedric Morris (1889-1982) at his Suffolk home, Benton End, and Charlotte Harris and Hugo Bugg’s Horatio’s Garden, created for the charity of that name which builds gardens for hospital spinal injuries units.
For the show’s cognoscenti, the top prize of best in show was always going to be awarded to one of these two, and in the end Horatio’s garden came through with a popular victory for a remarkable charity and a gorgeous mixture of perennial and shade-loving plants and fully wheelchair-accessible paths (a Chelsea show garden first).
Their garden will go on from the show to become the garden of the spinal injuries unit in Sheffield, exemplifying a new and commendable requirement by the RHS that all show gardens must have a life after Chelsea. This also applied to the small garden categories which gave the show’s gardens so much variety: Sanctuary Gardens, Container and Balcony Gardens and All About Plants Gardens.
Young desigers shine at Chelsea Flower Show 2023
These categories also offered the chance for new younger designers to have their first experience of Chelsea, like debutante’s Joe and Laura Carey whose Talitha Arts Garden won the All About Plants category.
And the show really was all about plants, not only in the show gardens but, for the first time for a few years, in the marquee which is traditionally home to specialist plant nurseries. The best exhibit award went to a stunning display of ferns by Kells Bay from Ireland, including stately tree ferns, Dicksonia antarctica.
Some of my other favourites were displays focusing on one family: Raymond Evison’s kaleidoscope of clematis cultivars; Claire Austin’s breath-taking array of bearded iris; Potash Nursery’s picturesque pelargoniums; and Peter Beales’ ravishing roses.
Magical displays at Chelsea Flower Show 2023
But my real delight was in two displays of mixed plants, the first an ever modest but constant star at Chelsea, the other a first-timer. Kevock Plants from Scotland have been creating magical small displays of alpines and woodland perennials for years and this year they were rewarded with the prestigious President’s Award – given by the President to just one exhibit in the whole show.
Kevock mixed tall meconopsis and candelabra primulas with other tiny treasures such as pale mauve flowered Anemonastrum obtusilobum and what could claim to be the plant of the show it appeared on so many exhibits and gardens, Thalictrum ‘Black Stocking.’
Micro-nurseries make their debut at Chelsea Flower Show 2023
The first timer was a group of eight ‘micro-nurseries’ who are part of the Plant Fair Roadshow that tours the south of England. Too small to exhibit on their own, the invitation from the RHS for them to form a group was inspired and clearly hugely popular with visitors.
Their stands were small but perfectly formed with an array of choice plants including one of my all-time favourite small perennials, the rarely seen Semiaquilegia ecalcarata with nodding soft-purple flower heads.
Given its international prestige and media attention, Chelsea is always a key launch event for new plants and this year was no exception. I particularly liked the currently very fashionable apricot shade of David Austin’s new shrub rose ‘Dannahue’ named after Danny Clarke (aka The Black Gardener).
SOUTH AFRICA WINS PLANT OF THE YEAR AT CHELSEA 2023
The RHS’s own top award, for Chelsea Plant of the Year went to a spectacular new cultivar of a long-established South African favourite, Agapanthus ‘Black Jack’ bred by South Africa’s own De Wet Plant Breeders. With large flowerheads of densely packed purple-black umbels it is a suitably spectacular note on which to end this round-up of a buoyant Chelsea Flower Show.
This article has been written by George Plumptre
