Yeo Valley Takes Organic to Chelsea

I was invited to Yeo Valley earlier this summer to look around and hear about their Chelsea garden.

Visiting gardens as part of my job can sometimes be depressing. It’s not that the gardens aren’t beautiful, most of them are stunning. It’s just that it leaves you feeling faintly inadequate when you look around your own plot that is far from perfect.

Yeo Valley is different, not because it isn’t beautiful, but because it’s more realistic. There was the odd weed, things that needed deadheading, bugs on some of the vegetables. This is mainly because it’s an organic garden and we were warned, ‘Don’t expect perfection’.

It’s something that’s going to follow through to their Chelsea garden. Being true to their ideals, and the organic ethos that they embrace both in the garden and in their yoghurt-making business is fundamental to who they are and how they will approach the world-famous flower show.

Tom Massey, who won Silver-Gilt for his Chelsea debut with the Lemon Tree Trust in 2018, has designed the garden with Sarah Mead, who runs Yeo Valley with her husband, Tim.

Sarah inherited “the bones of the garden” at the farm from her mother-in-law and “got addicted within a month of coming here”.

The Chelsea garden will incorporate many of the elements of the 6.5-acre Somerset plot, including the silver birch grove, gravel garden and pond, although Chelsea’s will have a wooden, egg-shaped hide suspended over it.

All the hard landscaping materials are coming from the farm – and will return to it. These include biochar logs, which are part of the garden’s message about the importance of looking after the soil.

The biochar is made on the farm using traditional methods – Tim Mead gave us an overview of the process – and the team have committed to returning the equivalent amount of carbon used to create the Chelsea garden back into the Somerset plot in the form of biochar.

Apart from the specimen trees and shrubs, everything is being raised organically and peat-free, much of it on the farm.

“The plants are grown organically and aren’t going to be as manicured and perfect as you might be used to,” Tom told us. “We can get around the lack of chemical and fertiliser in other ways. The garden is going to look quite natural and relaxed.”

It’s the third time they’ve grown for Chelsea as the garden was originally planned for last year and then last May. Around 4,000 plants destined for the first show were donated to hospitals during lockdown. The plants from the September show garden will return to the farm.

Sarah said the gardening team will all be at Chelsea to talk to visitors about the garden and explain their organic methods: “It’s really important to me that if a visitor can be bothered to stop and ask a question, I want the person who’s answering the questions to have real life experience of it.

“I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am, absolutely terrified, but I’m also really excited.”

Highlights of the Garden at Yeo Valley

It’s really difficult to pick out what I liked best about the garden at Yeo Valley – there were so many different elements and all of them good.

Here are just a few of the things that really caught my eye.

The pictorial meadow in front of the glasshouses is what Sarah described as her “Barbara Cartland moment”.

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Originally just lawn, it’s a glorious mix of colourful annuals and the closest she can get to a wildflower meadow on what is fertile ground.

“I’m really pleased with it. It’s really naff and really unsubtle but I love it.”

Two more meadows are now planted with perennials and bulbs, including snowdrops, camassias, kniphofia and gaura.

The garden is good with colour theming with distinct colour palettes in many of the garden ‘rooms’ and careful partnering of plants.

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I liked the way Eremurus ‘Cleopatra’ picked up the shades in Rosa ‘Buff Beauty’ and the dark pink of Centranthus ruber against the paler achillea.

This was a really good mix of colours in the gravel garden with the acid green just lifting the overall effect.

The garden is deep in the Somerset countryside and makes the most of its vistas with several ‘viewing points’.

And with a view like this, who can blame them?

At the event, Yeo Valley also announced that they would be funding a bursary scheme with Incredible Edible Bristol for an organic gardening course. You can find out more here.

The Organic Garden at Yeo Valley is open to the public. More details here.

The 2021 Chelsea Flower Show runs from September 21-26. More details here.

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