A New Dawn in Garden Design
As the dust settles after Chelsea amidst the season of flower shows taking place across the country, a change in garden design appears to have taken hold. Against a backdrop of increasing tension in the fight against environmental collapse, a new trend in naturalistic planting is taking place. The New Perennial Movement that began in the late 20th century, popularised by Piet Oudolf among others has been a dominant trend to this day. This naturalistic approach appears to be beginning to be adapted or perhaps replaced by those with more environmental, sustainable approaches to plant design.
Where the New Perennial Movement was influenced by North American prairies, mixing drifts of herbaceous perennials and grasses, this new trend focuses on pioneer plants and wildflowers, like those found on brownfield sites. The plants familiar to us all from birch, hawthorn and buddleja, to foxgloves, dandelions, and buttercups are proudly allowed to do their thing. Cleve West’s gold medal winning Centrepoint Garden from this year’s Chelsea, imagines a Victorian house that has long ago been forgotten and crumbled to the ground, only to be slowly colonised by plants. “It’s a visceral, powerful metaphor for homelessness: the ruins of a house that has been knocked down, and then nature has taken over slowly.” The plants taking over the space are representative of Nature’s healing. Tom Massey’s The Royal Entomological Society Garden borrows ideas from brownfield sites that, it has been discovered, house rich habitats for insects. The planting and habitat created by this design approach puts biodiversity as one of the highest priorities.
Bumblebee feeding on teasel (Dipsacus fullonum)
Aside from echoing the habitats and plants that are found on these brownfield sites, what are these designers trying to tell us, and what does it mean for the future of garden design?
The pioneer plants that colonise these sites of industrial decline do because they are easily able to adapt to the harsh environment. They can withstand poor, often compacted or polluted soils, exposed light and weather conditions, and tolerate drought during summer months. Indeed, the plants are found here because, as Rainer & West describe in their celebrated book Planting in a Post-Wild World, “stress is an asset”. The tolerance of a plant to the stresses (light, nutrients etc) will in large part determine its success at a site. The conditions that make this a unique habitat are the very qualities of the site that create a strong sense of place.
Buttercups: pioneer plant or ‘weed’?
The traditional approach when faced with land such as this is to add organic matter to the soil, open the site to allow more light in, and regularly irrigate it. But this interference will hinder optimal conditions for wildflowers, perhaps enabling traditional mixed borders to be grown. So here lies the conundrum: should we as designers be altering the natural habitat of our gardens, changing the stress factors to allow us to grow the plants we want, or should we adapt our planting to the land we are faced with?
Gardens are never natural. Since the inception of the enclosed ‘hortus conclusus’ Man has sought to bend nature to our will. So, to some degree these ‘wild’ Chelsea gardens are as composed as any domestic back garden, however the message they are giving out is clear. If we are to create gardens, we must keep in mind that there will be an impact on local biodiversity, and in a wider sense, the environment. We must aim to be more sustainable, and in our planting and management of a garden, be a bit less tidy, allow the odd dandelion to pop up, leave our flowers to form seedheads, leave trimmings to rot where they lay, leave the lawn unmown from time to time. The cumulative effect across the country from taking this outlook would give a great collective boost to biodiversity. However, within the confines of our climate and budget there should still be room for the garden we desire to create and reside in.
Scabiosa seedhead
So if we see Chelsea as a shop window or art gallery, where we can pick and choose, or be influenced by, elements we see in the show, then this new trend could well take hold in the nation’s consciousness and could be the new way forward in modern garden design.
References
Cleve West's 'Marmite' garden / RHS Gardening
Eight trends to spot at Chelsea Flower Show 2023 | Gardens Illustrated
Hobhouse, P. (2002) The Story of Gardening, London, Dorling Kindersley Ltd.
Rainer, T. & West, C. (2015) Planting in a Post-Wild World, Oregon, Timber Press
The RES Garden - Royal Entomological Society (royensoc.co.uk)
