R
HS Chelsea Flower show is fast approaching, and after our Fantastic Mr. Fox display from 2016, we’re busy ensuring our stand for 2017 is just as brilliant.
This year, we are drawing our inspiration from Nicole de Vesian’s famous garden at la Louve in Bonnieux (1986-1996). A former textile designer for Hermès, her elegant garden is composed mainly of evergreen Mediterranean shrubs and trees clipped into sculptural rounded and columnar forms.
As well as being truly beautiful, Nicole de Vesian’s garden is extremely relevant in today’s changing climate and highlights the challenges – such as higher temperatures, less precipitation, and a longer growing season – that gardeners are likely to face in the south east of the UK in the coming decades (Webster E, Cameron RWF and Culham A, (2017) “Gardening in a Changing Climate”, RHS).
We are delighted that this year our stand is designed by Slaine Campbell, a member of the Chartered Institute of Landscape, and a Landscape Architect with over 20 years of professional experience. Growing up by the beautiful Herefordshire/Wales border, Slaine gained a degree in Botany before qualifying as a Landscape Architect. Slaine has designed landscapes in the UK and the USA, ranging in scale from an entire holiday village covering several hundred hectares to a single Cambridge College garden.
Slaine’s planting scheme on our stand will be made up of shrubbery including European olive, Box, Lavender, Rosemary, Santolina (Cotton Lavender), Roses and Yew (Taxus baccata), and the herbaceous plants will be Alliums, Irises, Foxgloves In terms of colour, we’ve opted for a delicate palette combining green, silver-grey, purples, pinks, and a smattering of white.
And, of course, Slaine’s design creates the perfect stage to show off our sundials. We’ll be bringing a selection of our armillaries and horizontal dials to show, including an 80cm Bronze armillary, an 90cm Stainless steel armillary, and a 100cm Brass armillary.
So, if you’re coming to RHS Chelsea this year come and say hello.
