What was your favourite garden at the Chelsea Flower Show 2009? Was it James May’s garden-that-wasn’t-a-garden, or bronze fennel and peonies in the Laurent Perrier garden?
And what designs are you taking home? True, Plasticine roses don’t suffer from aphids, but you might find model clematis suffers from wilt if exposed to bright sunlight. Chelsea is a great place to pinch ideas from, even if you don’t plan to replicate a garden in full.
Here are the ideas we will be stealing for the Garden from Scratch:
1. Future Nature’s bug hotel and living walls.
This bookshelf of habitats for beneficial insects is a feature in its own right. It is far lovelier than a pile of mouldering logs dumped behind the shed, and replaces valuable habitats. Green walls have a reputation for being expensive to make, and tricky to maintain, so we’ll be making our own low-maintenance version. Oh, and we might not be making quite such a large tower…
2. Quirky containers
Grow a tea party centrepiece for your garden table using old leaky teapots and cups. These succulents need very little watering and adore a sunny position. This garden also used colanders, old boots and packing crates.
3. Squash tunnel
If you’re growing tired of pumpkins and squashes swamping your garden with 40ft-long vines, why not grow some of the lighter-fruiting varieties over a trellis, as Paul Stone did with the Key Garden? Choose a cultivar which does not exceed 2kg, such as a small butternut, or red kuri, and gently coax the stems over an archway or pergola. We’ll be growing ours up the fire-escape and over the trellis as well.
