Chaumont! Probably the best garden show in the world?

Chaumont: Gardening! –From Erotic to Rude.
As I write this blog I am reminded of a rather embarrassing episode that happened to me a couple of years back, when I visited the USA to do a radio interview on European garden trends.

It was for “W.H.B.S.Y. -coming to you from down-town Sacramento” (or something like that– all these radio stations sound the same to me!)

I had flown into San Francisco, on the late flight the previous evening.  Then driven 3 hours north east to Auburn, downed the better part of a bottle of California Red before collapsing in to bed, only to be woken at some ungodly hour the next morning, to drive back down the freeway to Sacramento, to do the “Garden Guru’s” 9am Saturday morning radio show.

Not surprisingly I was a little jet lagged, if not a little hung over. Definitely not a good combination when doing live public radio!

I was also extremely nervous, unlike UK radio, when you are lucky to get a 10 minute slot, this show was on for a whole hour with me being the only guest. The way I was feeling, I wasn’t sure I could manage 60 seconds let alone 60 minutes.

The studio was not what I had expected either and was little bigger than a passport photo booth. Rob Littlepage, who was standing in for the Don Yacuzami (the regular Garden Guru) squeezed his way back into the room and donned his headphones.

I sat down next to him but couldn’t get the door closed as my chair leg was blocking the entrance. After some discussion the door was left open and the producer Rick (or Ricky as he preferred to be called) bustled off into the next kiosk where he sat down behind a large glass screen and a bank for dials and buttons.

As I watched the seconds ticking away on the studio clock the intro. music faded in, sounding suspiciously like the theme-tune to the Archers:-and we were off.

Things started well, Rob did the introductions and thanked our sponsors. I manages to talk coherently for the first 20 minutes being periodically interrupted by callers phoning in to ask questions or publicise local events, the most notable being a ‘Toe-mat-toe tasting’, at the local nursery. “32 varieties!!! ……… I don’t know they had 32 varieties.”

I had just started to relax and let my concentration wane when Rob asked me about the contempory Garden show at Chaumont in France. All of a sudden I had a complete panic attack.


I should explain at this point that the French garden show has a theme each year and this year, typical of the French was ‘eroticism’. Knowing how prudish middle America can be, I new that this was not the subject for a Saturday morning breakfast show.

Unfortunately my mouth had other Ideas. Like a frozen rabbit caught in car headlights, I heard myself discussing one particular garden dominated by a pair of large 15ft high pink breasts.

My mind was screaming stop, but my mouth just kept on going. Rob had lost the plot at this point and was having a fit of the giggles.

The producer was wildly flailing his hand across his throat in a sawing motion and I was only saved by the timely interruption of an advert for ‘Sun Dance computers’.

On listening to a tape of the show afterwards, I had even managed to describe the viewing tower behind the garden for those people who wanted a birds-eye view of the giant mammaries.

Oh well, that’s probably the end of my radio career.

Nesting Marigolds

As for Chaumont sur Loire I would thoroughly recommend a visit even if you don’t like gardening. I take the student from the Oxford College of Garden Design there every year.  The Chateau is situated at the top of a cliff overlooking the river Loire and the show is situated in the park behind the castle in about ten acres. You enter, down a spiral staircase build into the hollow of a tree.

Cross a bridge over a 50ft gorge to some steps on the other side and finally, up into the show ground. The exhibits are identical in shape and size and each surrounded by a beech hedge.

Giant Corset

The exhibition attracts submissions from around the world with

every designer interpreting the brief in a different way.

From a nest of pink Marigold cloves to erupting luv bubbles (yes I didn’t understand this one either!) to a giant corset that you both walk through and round to a garden designed to imitate lingerie

Erupting Luv Bubbles

The setting is beautiful, the gardens imaginative and the restrant is to die for. It has to be one of the best (if not the wackyest) garden shows in the world.
For further information on Chaumont-sur-Loire
Tel: +33 (0) 254 209922
www.chaumont-jardins.com

 Negligee screening

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Should RHS show judges be allowed to enter Chelsea Flower Show? …..not in any other industry they wouldn’t!

At this years Chelsea Flower Show, Mark Gregory, an established landscaper was one of several RHS show judges exhibiting, who won a gold medal. Gregory’s gold was for a nice little courtyard garden for the Children’s Society. 

The garden was meticulously put together, but in design terms, was nothing that I wouldn’t have expect from one of my student’s first design projects.  Surprising then, that it got a gold despite the fact that it was nothing particularly special.

In the press this month questions have been raised about next years Chelsea Flower Show and the fact the chairman of the show judges, intends to build his second garden and is currently looking for sponsorship.

Forgive my scepticism, but if I was a sponsor with a couple of hundred grand to spend,  this would seem to me, the horticultural equivalent of looking a gift horse in the mouth!

How can the remaining RHS show judges possibly assess this garden in a fair and unbiased fashion?  The whole thing reeks of the old boy network and wouldn’t be tolerated in any other industry.

Without exception, every competition I can find, the rules clearly state that no employees or family of employees are permitted to enter and whilst the judges are volunteers, with hundreds of thousands of pounds in sponsorship and TV deals at stake, this clearly is a conflict of interest and the sooner the RHS wakes up to the fact the better.

What do you think?  Should judges be able to enter their own competitions?

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Festival de Jardins, Chaumont sur Loire: The New Chelsea

It always faintly amuses me when the RHS promote Chelsea Flower Show as the pinnacle of the Garden design world.

I’ve been teaching now for more than 20 years and Chelsea is anything but the bastion of good design.  The clue is in the title; Chelsea Flower Show not Chelsea Design Show. In fact all the examples I use for teaching purposes of bad design, come from Chelsea.

Chelsea is over crowded, political, wasteful, and regurgitating the same old design formats seen year after year (see Roger Platts garden at this year show, straight out of the 1980’s)

Why do these designers bother? or do they constantly need their ego’s massaging by the old boy network!

Chaumont is everything Chelsea is not, Innovative, creative, tranquil, inspirational, politically unbiased, and environmentally sensitive.  My students are encouraged to go to both shows, but always feel inspired and reinvigorated having visited Chaumont.

Click here to see more photos

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Breaking News RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2014 Medal Winners Announced

Chelsea Flower Show Medals Announced!

Congratulations to the Laurent-Perrier Garden, Best Show Garden, and all the award winners at the 2014  RHS Chelsea Flower Show!  I am of course delighted that I called the best in show winner in my MyGardenSchool predictions blog from seeing the show gardens yesterday!

Congratulations to Luciano Giubbilei - well deserved.

Chelsea Flower Show Gardens - Winners

Best Show Garden

The Laurent-Perrier Garden

Designed by Luciano Giubbilei

Best Fresh Garden

The Mind's Eye

Designed by LDC Design

Best Artisan Garden

Togenkyo – A Paradise on Earth

Designed by Kazuyuki Ishihara

Gold Medallists.

• The Homebase Garden – Time to Reflect, in association with Alzheimer’s Society
• The Laurent-Perrier Garden
• The M&G Paradise Garden
• No Man’s Land: ABF The Soldiers’ Charity Garden to mark the centenary of World War One
• RBC Waterscape Garden
• The Telegraph Garden

• Silver-gilt medallists
  Silver medallists
  Bronze medallists

• All Show Garden awards download (82kB pdf)
• All Fresh Garden awards download (15kB pdf)
• All Artisan Garden awards download (11kB pdf)

Great Pavilion

RHS Chelsea Plant of the Year 2014
Hydrangea macrophylla Miss Saori (‘H20-2’)

Ryoji Irie

Diamond Jubilee Award

South West in Bloom

President’s Award

Birmingham City Council

Best RHS Discovery exhibit

Sparsholt College

All Great Pavilion awards download (114kB pdf)

• All RHS Discovery awards download (15kB pdf)

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“A Game of Contrast” Former Students win Best Festival Garden 2014, RHS Malvern

This is a blog by former student Ana Mari Bull who along with former fellow student Lorenzo Soprani won Best Festival Garden 2014, RHS Malvern.

How many of us dream of creating a show garden as soon as we graduate, but are put off because of the lack of funding or sponsorship? Years can go by and you get more involved in building up your practice, but the dream is still there, tucked away at the back of your brain, behind the planting plans and construction drawings that need to be finished yesterday. As you take on more work, you can feel the dream becoming more and more distant.

This was how I felt last year; I was up to my eyes in work, so I turned to my friend and fellow student Lorenzo Soprani for help. We worked really well together and it made the lonely existence of a freelance designer more bearable. In turn, he would pass work onto me when I was quiet on the work front. We soon found that we were in fact collaborating on every project we did, so in effect had become one practice. Work started to dry up towards the end of last year and the dream started to wiggle its way back to the front of our minds.

Lorenzo picks up the story here, “It was late in January when my colleague and friend Ana and I decided to have a go at designing a show garden. To be honest I was not particularly busy and it is when the mind is at rest that those ideas spring to mind! But with not much income and no name so to speak to bring in financial backing, the chances of us being able to afford to do a show garden was still very much a distant dream. So having looked around for an opportunity I discovered that the RHS was re-launching the Malvern Spring Flower Show as the “RHS Malvern Spring Festival” and to celebrate that, they were giving away £3000 bursaries to help fund first timers in a new category of show gardens called the “Festival Gardens”. I decided fairly quickly to have a go and the design came very easily as having only 15 meter square to play with, the design needed to be simple. Once all the documents were sent off we did not think about it much, there was nothing to do apart from waiting and luckily for us the office phone was starting to ring again! It was on the 14^th of March that we had confirmation that our design had been selected along with 3 others by the RHS panel.

At this point panic started to set in, as I feared that we couldn’t afford to do it. It was only at this stage in the process that we learnt the RHS where only giving us half of the bursary, the remainder would be paid at the end of the show once breakdown had been completed and the site was given the all clear by the organisers.”

With our design accepted so late in the day we had very little time to find the extra funding needed to top up the kitty, but it’s amazing how time pressures can make you focus. Having the RHS backing also helped enlist other sponsors.

The plants, hedges and all the hard landscaping materials were sourced, but we couldn’t find the specimen trees which were key to the design. It was now the last week in March, the end of the bare root season, and still we hadn’t found all of our trees. Finally, Lorenzo got a call from a nurseryman who had tracked down the last three trees from a nursery in Germany. It was the last day of lifting when we received an urgent email: are you taking the trees? All we had to go on was a poor quality photo. Without the trees we didn’t want to continue. We took them, hoping that these skinny looking ugly ducklings would turn into the magnificent swans we needed.

As well as having the RHS bursary, the designers of the Four Festival Garden were mentored through the build by the principal of a major design school in the area. The support and advice we got from her and from Nina Acton, the events co-ordinator for the Three Counties Showground was superb. For first timers, having someone on hand to reassure you is invaluable. The build wasn’t all plain sailing; the contractor who we had engaged to build our small wall didn’t turn up. It was at this stage that the fabled camaraderie which exhibitors say exists between those at the ground became apparent. A landscaper from another garden came over between jobs to build our wall, which he then also rendered for us, before being whisked off to finish the garden he was originally working on. Tools appeared when they were needed and disappeared just as quickly. The elves were at work. As we didn’t have a contractor we did all of the hard landscaping ourselves. I can’t take any of the credit for all the heavy jobs, which Lorenzo undertook as if he had been a professional landscaper for years. I can though, take half of the credit for the pebble path. Neither of us had done anything like this before. Having failed to find a video on YouTube on “how to build a show quality pebble path” we just got stuck in. Ignorance, as they say, is bliss. The plants arrived on the Wednesday afternoon; it took us all day Thursday to place them and then the Friday to plant them up. We were on schedule. The plants had time to naturally reposition themselves before judging on the Wednesday and we were able to primp and preen to our hearts’ content. We were more than lucky with the weather during the build; the week of the show was quite something else, and judging took place in torrential rain and extremely high winds. Malvern is windy at the best of times, but this was excessive. From eight in the morning until nine at night we waited, wet, cold, and buffeted by the wind, for the medal announcements. Luckily one of the larger show gardens had built a sunken dining area with a pizza oven which had been burning all day, so as the evening drew to a close we all huddled together to keep warm. When the results finally came in, just after 9.00pm we were too tired to take it all in, as all we wanted to do was go home to a hot bath. The wonderful thing about RHS Malvern was that the next day, two of the judges came round to each of the gardens to talk through why we received the medal we did. This was so helpful. They were really engaging and very generous in their comments. We learnt a great deal as to how the panel think!

If anyone is thinking of taking their first steps into the world of show gardens, then RHS Malvern is the place to start. The support is fantastic, the setting is beautiful and the experience is very rewarding… Though now we’re hooked and can’t wait to do another one!

Don't’ forget to pack your thermals!

To contact LSV Gardens & Associates please click here

Technorati Tags: LSV Gardens & Associates,RHS Malvern,Best Festival Garden 2014,A Game of Contrast,Ana Mari Bull,Lorenzo Soprani Volpini,Garden Design,Show garden,Landscape Design,Planting

Students Win Garden Design Competition at the Southport Flower Show

Oxford College of Garden Design

PRESS RELEASE May 2010

It has just been announced that students from the Oxford College of Garden Design have won the prestigious 2010 Student Garden Design Competition of the Southport Flower Show, to be held from 19 to 22 August in Merseyside. Alexandra Lehne and Lea Maravic (shown above) are currently studying for the postgraduate level Diploma in Residential Garden Design at the Oxford College of Garden Design.

Alexandra and Lea have won a £6,000 commission to build their winning design at the show and received excellent feedback on their garden, which the organisers have described as “one of the best entries ever submitted into the competition!”

Download full plans and details here

The brief was to design a garden based on the Show’s theme of “Coast”, in a 6m x 6m square plot and Alex and Lea’s winning submission included a detailed scale plan, planting plan, scale drawings and illustration (as per example above).

The postgraduate level Diploma in Residential Garden Design offered by the Oxford College of Garden Design is widely regarded as one of the leading garden design courses in the world. Held at St Hugh’s College Oxford, which is set in 14 acres of beautiful landscaped gardens, applications are currently being taken for the next 1 year fast-track course which starts on 30^th September 2010. The world’s first interactive online garden design course has also been launched by the College to run alongside the full time course. To find out more visit:

www.garden-design-courses.co.uk or telephone 01491 628950 for further information.

Oxford College of Garden Design

The College was set up by Duncan Heather in 1992 and has attracted students from around the world, including America, New Zealand and Japan, as well as the UK. Duncan Heather is one of Europe’s foremost garden designers. Duncan was trained by Britain’s best-loved octogenarian designer and garden writer, John Brookes OBE, whom many regard as one of the world’s top garden designers of the 20th Century. In a career now spanning over 30 years, Duncan has won five gold medals, one silver, one bronze and three awards for innovative design.

FOR FURTHER MEDIA INFORMATION

INCLUDING INTERVIEWS AND HI-RES IMAGES PLEASE CONTACT:

GM-PR georgina@gm-pr.co.uk 020 8546 0013

Technorati Tags: Garden Design Competition. Southport Flower Show,Oxford College of garden Design

Former student Mel Jolly, wins BBC Gardeners World Design competition

By Mel Jolly Garden Design
See NS&I Competition Details

My design provides a practical space for every stage of growing food in the garden – seed tray for propagation, cold frames for the more tender plants, the main growing beds and upright support for climbing plants right through to a compact composter in the small storage area to recycle unwanted parts of the plants. In a time where convenience seems to be paramount to people’s lives I feel this design brings together this convenience with a more old fashioned but increasingly popular pastime of growing our own food. It also brings in a social aspect with a bar table that can not only be used for potting and working but also for eating some of the produce grown.

The main features of this garden are the central multipurpose table and the large curved boundary wall. The table is divided into sections – half of which is a storage compartment for all the tools needed and a small composting bin. This can be screened off and locked by a concertina type door. Quarter of the table can be used as a bar area for working and eating. The remaining surface of the table has a seed tray incorporated into it. Below the seed tray the table is screened off with glass to provide a cold frame. The curved wall will be painted with blackboard paint to keep a regular maintenance schedule for work in the garden and joins onto a lower wall with more glass cold frames.

Most of the material used to construct this garden is timber. Timber is extremely durable and if properly managed potentially indefinitely renewable. All timber used will be sustainable timber with the internationally recognised Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification. I have used very little hard landscaping –most of the ground surface will be pea shingle to give a sustainable drainage system. SuDS. If money allows the large wall will be constructed in such a way as to harvest rainwater for re-use in the garden. The garden contains a small compact compost tumbler.

I believe my design provides an organised, practical and aesthetic place to grow food. Allotments and growing at home have taken off in the past few years but there are still many people who have the will to grow their own but not quite the way. This is often because they don’t quite know how to go about it or don’t have much time. My design is compact and everything is on hand. Also because it has a good space for sitting it means some jobs can be done in a very relaxed and social way in an ‘around the kitchen table’ kind of way. It is also a place for relaxing in a beautiful space not just for working. The ground pattern is not traditional and I think it is good to show that growing food doesn’t have to be ‘allotment’ in style but plants can really be grown in such different ways. The design will be chic, but not at the expense of sustainability or practicality which will still be paramount.

Plants:

The plants I have chosen are all plants that would usually be either sown, planted or harvested during May and June. They are also varieties that I feel are popular and commonly eaten, especially salad foods and fruit. From a design point of view many of the plants have red colourings which I believe will look stunning as well as taste delicious.

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Chelsea 2014 Review: The Telegraph Garden

This year’s Telegraph garden is designed by Tommaso del Buono and Paul Gazerwitz  and is supposed to be Italian inspired, with a modern twist.  This is the first time I have seen the proposed plan and to be honest, I am a little disappointed.

Click Here to see the Telegraph Article

Why? ……Because I have been looking forward to seeing their entry, especially after seeing the beautiful examples of their work on their website http://delbuono-gazerwitz.co.uk/

They appear to have 2 distinct, almost opposing styles of design.  The first ‘contemporary classical’ using a formal axial design and the second  heavily plant based, using herbaceous perennials interspersed with topiary. I particularly liked the clean simple lines of their gardens and particularly liked the their “Topiary no flowers approach to gardening” which relies more on light and shadow, form and shape to provide the  visual interest.

Their other style, relies heavily on planting and while nice, can be seen in many other designers portfolios.

What concerns me about their Chelsea exhibit, is that it appears to be a pastiche of both style -neither one thing or the other. I would surmise that being a design partnership, Buono favours the contemporary classic and Gazerwitz  the horticultural fluff. But not having met them, I can only speculate that the coming together to create this exhibit, has been an uneasy compromise of both designer’s work.

The plan is based on a simple grid system and designed to be viewed from both the side and the front, although the front view is likely to give the best overall impression of the garden.  In the Telegraph article they describe the garden

“as to adhere to the guiding principles of Italian horticultural tradition, but with a modern slant, and will be refreshingly simple in nature.”

If I squint, I can just about see the Italian influence,  but could “refreshingly simple” be another description for dull?

A central formal lawn (seen in so many Chelsea gardens in the past) is bordered by a stone path (or is that a simply a mowing edge, dependent on the vigour of the topiary?) The flower borders are minimal in width and they will struggle to create anything crowd pleasing in those.

The one unknown in all this is the topiary at both ends.  If they can find trees of a sufficient size and maturity to create the canopy roof they talk about, then they may just pull it off.

Having said this, I am unconvinced by the way the tree trucks interfere with the usable space on the rear terrace, rendering it useless as a dinning space and only fit for a few chairs.

While critiquing a garden from plan is very difficult, the technical execution of its building will be paramount to its success or failure.  The six figure budget will almost certainly guarantee it a gold medal, but will it be a best in show – I personally don’t think so.

Let us know what you think,  Do you agree or disagree?

Technorati Tags: Telegraph Garden,Chelsea Flower Show 2014,Chelsea,RHS,Royal Horticultural Soceity,Tommaso del Buono,Paul Gazerwitz,Italian,Garden,Exhibit,Review

Garden Design Competition: Win a Place on the world’s first professional Online Design Course worth over $9000

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can now train as a garden designer from home, wherever you are in the world. Award-winning British garden designer, Duncan Heather, founder and principal of the Oxford College of Garden Design, has just launched the world's first-ever interactive online garden design course.

There's a lot misconception regarding the word online. Our new course is not a correspondence course you download from the web; it truly is online.

All lectures will be watched as on-line video tutorials. There will be interactive online exercises, and students will talk to their tutors using web chat and classes will be given via webinars.

Each online student will be allocated their own qualified garden design tutor and will follow the same timetable as the classroom students.

The one-year course provides a post-graduate level qualification in residential landscape architecture and offers:

• Interactive video tutorials and podcasts

• A personal tutor

• Community-based learning in the "virtual classroom", i.e. talking with fellow students via online forums

• Lectures to listen to on iPod/phone/MP3 player

• Online galleries – featuring ground plans, planting plans, construction drawings and more

• Monthly webinars - live video streams with question and answer sessions
  
• Interactive video tutorials on CAD (computer aided design) and ground modelling

HOW TO ENTER
Click here for details

Closing date is the 30th March 2010 so get your entries in soon!

Winning Design By Sophie Dixon

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