Long hours, intense pressure but with an adrenaline buzz like no other, the RHS Chelsea build is like little else in horticulture. I was invited along to see how a show garden is put together.
It was the lack of space that struck me most. I’m used to crowds at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show but this was different.
The route around the showground was clogged with traffic for most of the day, lorries often perilously close to trollies of plants or the edges of garden sites, leaving little room to get past.
More plants, wheelbarrows and all the other paraphernalia needed to build a garden or construct a trade stand often blocked what are usually thoroughfares. Walking around meant checking ahead to ensure you could actually get through.
Many of the garden teams had little more than a shed to store personal belongings – essential supplies like food, or in the case of yesterday, suncream.
Yet despite the challenges, there were few raised voices and an overwhelming sense of excitement.
I’d been invited to the Chelsea build by designer Paul Hervey-Brookes who is building a show garden for RBC Brewin Dolphin.
Paul’s got a lot of show garden experience – he’s won top medals at all the RHS shows and has designed for international competitions. He told me that getting the right team was critical when it came to a smooth build.
“It’s crucial because deadlines are so tight. You need a team with the right energy.”
Not only must they be able to take instruction or even criticism if something’s not quite right, they need to be able to understand what the designer is trying to achieve and ‘mimic’ their style.
“People are creating something that is purely in your head and all they’ve got to go on is how you describe it.”
As a result, many of his team have worked with him before, several of them head gardeners or designers in their own right.
“Our main emphasis is make sure that it’s a team that gels together, that has good humour,” explained Paul. “There’s a core team because they get it and then every year I try to have two or three new people just to give them the opportunity.”
The Chelsea build lasts three weeks and they’d begun the garden by digging – around 15 tonnes of soil was removed to make the garden sit 150mm below show level. There’s also a further sunken area that’s clad in porcelain tiles. Next came the rest of the hard landscaping – more paving, the boundary wall and an oak pavilion. Finally, it was the planting. Trees and shrubs followed by perennials.
Paul plants all but a couple of small areas himself with one of the team acting as a ‘runner’ to fetch plants from the trollies. He plants instinctively, not following a plan, but allowing the plants to lead him – running a drift of things that would naturally self-seed, for example.
“Once you bring in the trees, and the shrubs, the key backbone, planting is simply a question of understanding how the plant would grow.”
At every stage plants are checked and sometimes rejected. They’re ‘picked over’ on the trollies with dead heads or yellowing foliage removed. The quality of plants is part of the judging process.
Paul aims to get the planting finished with at least a day before the garden is assessed and two days before judging. This allows plants to settle and relax into their new home.
A couple of the team were assigned to ‘fluffing’ up the display. This is painstaking work requiring a sharp eye and infinite patience.
Homemade scoops – a cut down porridge pot – are used to carefully pour soil into gaps betweeen plants, often with a stick used to gently move stems out of the way.
The plants are also examined to make sure the display looks as natural as possible. Leaves may be removed, stems moved to go in a different direction. It’s a process that is repeated at least twice.
This attention to detail extends to the soil itself. Throughout the Chelsea build, the team have been hand-tearing dried leaves to create a ‘mulch’. It needed breaking up so the type of leaves could not be identified – they’re not the same as the trees in the garden – but Paul didn’t want them machine cut as that wouldn’t give the appearance of natural leaf drop.
Part of the ‘fluffing’ is making sure the mulch is applied so it looks as though the plant has grown through it rather than had it applied after planting.
Other small details include painting the lathes on the pavilion so that they match the back wall, and gently scoring along the grout lines in the paving to make it look worn and older than just three weeks.
Keeping the paving clean was proving a challenge. Much of it was covered, shoes were removed before walking on parts of the garden and many of the team were wearing plastic foot covers. Even so, keeping the inevitable dust and earth off is difficult even with regular rounds of RHS water ‘spreaders’ trying to dampen the dusty road. The first stage of washing the porcelain was starting as I left.
The path had a lot of attention, firstly tamped down by hand and then by machine, several times, with plants carefully lifted to get right to the path’s edge.
One of the garden’s central features is three ceramics by French artist Gregory Tzarig, who is also part of the build team. Despite their fragility, these have been in place for some time because the border they sit in needed to be planted.
Getting things in early to give them time to settle, paying attention to the detail is all part of making the garden seem real.
“I want the person who stands here to think that the garden exists that it’s not a show garden. It’s a garden that just happens to be here,” said Paul.
And if you’re going to Chelsea, or watching the TV coverage, do pay attention to the mulch – some of it was hand-torn by me.
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2023 runs from May 23-27. More details on the RHS website.
Enjoyed this? You can read about more of my garden show visits here.
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