Green-fingered

RHS CHELSEA FLOWER SHOW INSPIRES US TO 'DIG FOR NATURE'

This year's Chelsea Flower Show, the first ever to be held in autumn, may be just as vibrant and full of colour as it is every summer, but it carries a green message with nature at its core. This time it features a rich variety of nature and eco-friendly gardens, focused on nature for well-being, averting the climate crisis and woodland planting.

The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) who announced their 'Planet Friendly Garden' campaign a week before the show, has even funded its own'Cop 26' garden comprising of four key themes split within the garden; decline, adaptation, mitigation and balance, with the aim of highlighting the importance of sustainable horticulture ahead of the Cop26 climate summit to be held in Glasgow in November. The RHS want their 'call to action' to be for each of the nations' 30 million gardeners to make small changes to their own gardens, which collectively will make a big difference.

Dame Judi Dench (whose said her passions in life are 'Shakespeare' and 'trees') officially opened the RHS Queen's Green Canopy Garden, the largest plot at the show, featuring 21 trees and more than 3,500 plants to highlight the importance of trees and woodland and to urge visitors to "Plant a tree for the Queen's platinum jubilee", starting this October.

Honouring 200 years since Florence Nightingale's birth, nursing and healthcare, a restorative hospital courtyard garden has a focus on wellbeing with late-flowering perennials and grasses and a timber pergola providing shady places to sit, reflect and relax. The Bible Society's 'Psalm 23 Garden', inspired by the landscape of Dartmoor, complete with a waterfall also represents a spiritual oasis in which to escape and re-engage with nature and strengthen well-being. Meanwhile the Saatchi Gallery's garden's aim is "to spark a dialogue about our interaction with nature and dependency on industry" and is centred around a repurposed transit van whose walls have been hand cut into a forest by contemporary artist Dan Rawlings.

Being 'Organic September' it's appropriate that this year's Chelsea Flower Show is featuring the first organic show garden approved by The Soil Association. Inspired by the real organic garden and farmland at the Yeo Valley family-owned farm in Somerset, it was designed to create a beautiful and peaceful space that encourages nature and has a focus on the importance of healthy, fertile soil. It includes an open perennial meadow with flowers and silver birch and a range of habitats and plants to encourage wildlife and support pollinators. (A real common brown lizard was even spotted on a pile of logs on the opening day!).

Tom Massey, who co-designed the show garden (which has been awarded gold in the Show garden category), said: "The soil plays a pivotal role in our fight to reverse climate change but the world of microscopic activity under our feet is often overlooked. Carbon is the building block of all life and as gardeners we need to be reminded of the role we play in locking carbon into the soil, where it can help sustain life for generations to come. We want to create a beautiful garden that inspires visitors to think about using more sustainable gardening practices."

A Chinese 'eco-garden', highlighting how global cities can "work in harmony with nature" was winner of the show's top award. The garden features a woodland dell for fresher air, a calming pool, trees and shrubs including dawn redwood, Scots pine, field maple and birch and shelters made from fast-growing recyclable Moso bamboo. Commissioned by the government of Guangzhou, China's fifth biggest city, the gardens debut co-designer, Peter Chmiel said he was inspired by Guangzhou's change from being the most polluted city in China to one of the cleanest and he said there were many lessons to be learnt by London planners in creating an "ecological civilisation".

"In this show garden the woodland dell is the lung that cleans the air, the pool is the kidney with clean water and the bamboo laminated grid shell is the heart that provides social spaces for humans and homes for nature."

New competition categories this year, following a growing interest in gardening under the Covid-19 lockdowns, included balcony gardens and container gardens which can also act as pollinator corridors for solitary bees, bumblebees, honeybees and hoverflies.

Prof Alistair Griffiths, director of science and collections at the RHS, said he's calling on us each of us to do our bit and hopes the government will recognise and appreciate how important gardening is for mitigating against the climate crisis and helping to reverse biodiversity loss, "We're a passionate nation of gardeners. Gardening is one of a number of ways the UK general public can take action".

The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is on until 26th September 2021. For more information click HERE.