RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2024. Small Space Gardening Ideas

Join me on an in-depth tour of the small space gardens at The RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2024. We meet garden designers, exhibitors and nurseries to get all the information on their what goes into exhibiting at the show. I take you on a balcony tour of some of the gardens and find out how we can implement some of the ideas into our own small space gardens.

We meet Lincolnshire Pond plants who supply the plants to my fabulous container plants as well as Ian from Peter Beales Roses who shed a bit more light into their own displays. The goal is help you get some tips and tricks to make your gardens bloom this summer.

Interested in Container Ponds?:
https://cloudgardeneruk.co.uk/shop/ols/categories/container-ponds

Lincolnshire Pond Plants:

Homepage

Peter Beales Roses:
https://www.classicroses.co.uk/

Tom Bannister
https://www.tombannisterstudio.com/

Mike Mcmahon
https://www.mikemcmahonstudio.com/junglette

Michaela Trinca
https://www.rhs.org.uk/shows-events/misc-shows/designer-biogs/michela-trinca

Katherine Holland
https://www.katherine-holland.co.uk/You can follow me on Instagram: @cloudgarderneruk

www.cloudgardeneruk.co.uk

#gardening
00:00:00 Grand Pavillion
00:03:51 Aquatic Plant Nursery Tour: Lincolnshire Pond Plants
00:12:46 Rose Nursery Exhibiting at Chelsea
00:22:22 Balcony Garden – Shade
00:23:14 Balcony Garden – Full Sun
00:28:15 Inner City Container Garden
00:31:55 Balcony Garden – Jungle Tropical
00:38:34 Flooding – Garden Water Management
00:44:16 Garden Joy
00:48:04 Grief In The Garden
00:52:41 Show Gardens In The Rain

now of course you cannot come to the Chelsea flower show without taking stroll through the floral Marquee and let me tell you child there are some sights to be seen in here now the first thing that caught my eye when I walked into the Pavilion were these fish and let me tell you koi carb of this size they do not come cheap I would love for you to put some guesses for the prices of each one of these fish Down Below in the comments because I’m thinking it’s upwards of at least £1,000 each incredible and just look how crystal clear the water is as well you guys know how much I love patunas I will find a way to get them into every single one of myign sign so imagine my surprise to be here at the Chelsea flower show to find a Resurgence in the pus please tell me that I’m not alone with my love of pus if you like pus give this video a like or at least let me know in the comments so that I don’t feel ashamed for me Pinos are really awesome for my pollinators on my balcony because actually my number one pollinators are flies so these guys are perfect for me the first Garden that we’re going to look at today is called the pulp friction growing skills Garden this is an Edible Garden and it features reclaimed or recycled local materials and it’s concrete and cement free and all elements are to be either relocated or reused by pulp friction after the show the planting is designed around the concept of a forest garden it’s inspired by the largest Roman remnant of sherid forest the area that pulp friction the charity calls home after the show The Garden’s going to be relocated to Stock Hill fire station in Nottingham where it will be used as a safe welcoming space that the local communities and firefighters suffering from psychological stress will be able to unwind and it looks like I wasn’t the only person who found this Garden really interesting cuz Uncle Monty and and Joe were on the garden as well it’s no wonder that this Garden won People’s Choice with the cost of living crisis it was so amazing to see in the Pavilion just how many exhibitors decided to use containers to grow food in a show first the rhs partnered up with ubbs to create this beautiful exhibit which was an immersive walkthrough feature Garden which gave visitors an insight into a Grower’s daily life it showcased the work that goes into growing the award-winning plants on display at the world’s most famous flower show and their other Gardens the exhibit was designed by Emma tipping and it also featured contributions from four nurseries she grows veg Kent wildflower seeds the Katie brothers and also kitchen Garden plant center now speaking of nurseries I thought since we’re in the Pavilion it’ll be really great to get an understanding from some of the nurseries to find out what it takes to make a display here at Chelsea [Music] now if those about me you know how much I absolutely love water features and right now we are sending on a water feature which is designed by Lincolnshire pond plants and those of you who already have one of my container ponds you’ll be very very familiar with Lincoln chipon plants as this is the nursery that supplies my plants now over the past year or so I’ve been documenting their success with their show Garden features and I thought I would give you a sneak peek at the behind the scenes and how a nursery an aquatic Nursery operates we’re starting off today in the delightful Seaside town of CLE thorps I’m going to take a train from CLE thorps all the way through grimsbury town over to Market raisin or razin I don’t know how you pronounce it my destination is Lincoln ship P plants I didn’t particularly know what to expect but it wasn’t this it’s awesome I’m D Fisher from Lincoln Chon I’ve been to your Nursery around about 12 months or so ago and I had the pleasure of walking around and it is not small at all how did their nurser even come to be so we’re on a 15 Acre Site we’ve gone from a small Warehouse where we had a little bit of outside work now we’re on 15 Acres with 15 green houses and it’s in an RAF base is that right old RAF B and we’ve converted Old Miss plants into green houses and it’s not just one or two plants that you sell there I believe you got quite the variety so we have about 350 different varieties my son started this by clearing a lake for somebody and thought he could sell a few bunches online to maybe take the kids on holiday or a treat and it absolutely snowballed and then we end I ended up going and working for him at about 4:00 in the morning morning then going and teaching all day and then coming back home again so then I ended up giving up work and going and working for him and then all of a sudden it’s turned into 15 Acres 15 Acres trust me to pick today where we are going through a storm I think it’s called storm Norma and the winds are tremendous now I was here to select the ponds that were going to feature in my container ponds which are now available on my website however Dawn was in the process of working out what plants she was going to be using for her show gardens through 2023 the guys here at lincolshire pom plants they grow almost 80% of everything from seed or from propagations so I’m on my way over to the nursery to go and have a look and see what they’ve been growing to be honest I don’t really know what I was expecting but it kind of hit me walking in just how much work goes into a nursery if you think about every single individual plant in these sea trays will eventually need to be picked out and then put into their very own containers there’s something about being in the space and then physically just seeing it for yourself and knowing all the hard work that actually goes into US purchasing plants online or from a store d was showing me that actually at this stage the plants were ready to be potted on okay confess in the comments below if you thought that actually there would be loads of I don’t know tanks or pools or something where the seeds would be growing I did not expect there to be tons of seed trays dwn and the team here have been so lovely they even given me some seeds so I’m going to be showing you how to grow some pom plants from seed later on this season I was literally like a child in a candy shop there was so much it took a while to figure out which plants I wanted to select so I don’t know how Dawn does it now this Nursery is pretty young so I wanted to find out more from dawn about how the nursery got started and their connection to the show Garden World fast forward to here we sat at the Chelsea flower show so how did you get from uh the nursery into making show pons at some of the biggest shows in the country so we started off by me buying my son a tra a stand at Harriet flower show so he had no choice because I said if you want to get out there and people to know who you are you’ve got to start doing some shows so that’s how it started then we went and we got seen at the other shows and got invited then to come to the rhs and to BBC Garden well amazing and talk us through the the design here because this seems to be a little bit larger than the pond that I saw when I came to visit you last year in fact that one looked about half the size of this it was less than half the size of this this is three times the size we normally do 100 square m this is absolutely huge 10 1 12,000 L of water which they are going to drain down a little Gully at the far end of this Nursery we decided to do it as two separate ponds with the bridge across the middle because then people could actually immerse themselves into the pond rather than just seeing it from the outside and looking in you can actually see it from all angles and I think I absolutely love that but I also love the height and structure that you’ve managed to get into here cuz it’s not all level so was that all part of the plan so for me when you look at people’s ponds everything always seems so flat they always have water lies in there there’s no height or anything and there are so many plants that you can put in that actually give it a bit of structure the one problem people have is if they put anything with any height into a pond they have the problem if the Wind Blows the pots fall over and everybody gets annoyed with all the pots falling over so the best thing to do is get a bigger pot just fill it with pea gravel plant into the pea gravel which then gives you that stability and if the wind blows taller plants will stay upright that’s amazing that’s a amazing and so you got all of this height in this show Pond but this is something that you advise people to do in the actual ponds to get all of this high struct so what you want to do is you want to add a bit of feature to your pond a bit of architecture so it can still be for wildli so anything emergent so all the tall plants that are coming out of your pond are ideal for your dragonflies and for your NES but all your lower growing stuff is ideal for your FR so the more height you’ve got the more you’re going to encourage more wildlife in so therefore all your birds will come bees will come to it all and speaking of dragonflies I’ve noticed for the first time ever seeing one of your show pons there’s some form of of structure here sculpure yeah we only found that two weeks ago it’s a guy that’s only been doing sculpturing for 3 years so it’s it’s called Steve Davis and we saw him at Molin and as we walked around we just saw a sculpture there and we asked him if we could borrow it it is absolutely amazing because I’ve seen other sculptures and I’ve been offered other sculptures but they tend to look a bit Tacky in a pond and you’ve got to get the right sculpture to make it look classy enough I think and I think what I also love is the fact that you as as a company you’re really focused on bringing Wildlife into our ponds and so I know that you have n packs and that you have dragonfly packs so it it’s really fitting actually that your main sculpture and your first ever sculpture in a pond is a dragonfly yeah absolutely it’s stunning and he’s also done it exact to scale amazing abely well thank you so much for taking the time out of your day and also I do know a few of our viewers today have got some of my container ponds which of course view Supply so thank you from all of us for supplying all of our plants and this fantastic display thank you very much thank you now a lot of work goes into making an exhibit here and I wanted to find out a little bit more from Nursery to see what actually is the process we’re going to go over and meet e who is the head Gardener at Peter Bill’s roses to find out a little bit more about what goes on behind the scenes hello um I’m Ian Limer from Peter Beal’s roses I’ve worked for the company now for 45 46 years something like that I started as a Satur Saturday boy weeding and watering I’m still doing that today at the moment um so I’m very much hands on uh my title is Nursery manager so I started actually when I was 15 uh two weeks before my 16th birthday and within 6 weeks uh Peter said to me Ian would you like to come to Chelsea flower show and just blown away you know to be able to come to London let alone you know the world’s biggest um flower you know flower show so that was amazing here we are nearly 47 years later I’m still growing roses we’re delighted and honored uh this year to introduce a rose for the rnli well my grandfather uh was a lifeboatman for 30 years so it it quite close to my heart you know with the grandfather you know going out uh I believe he saved 160 lives through his career and he went out in these the old rowing boats uh and then the sailing you know the Sailing Boat so it was you know it was straight away that I thought let’s contact the rnli and see if we’ve got a rose that might suit them so they came down and we we showed them a about 8 to 10 seedlings and then they they chose this beautiful one here which was um this sort of apricot orange fading to a sort of a lemon yellow or peachy yellow and that picks out the rib of the boat of the first sort of color and then it fades to sort of the yellow of their uh life jackets we’re donating 20% of the takings from that and over the next couple of years we’re hoping to raise between 35 and 40,000 PS for the charity talk us through this whole design process what what happens first do you have this idea with with the rnli first or did you design the space first how does it all begin well again going back to 2021 and then then they said yes you know that would be lovely um so straight away then you start thinking in your mind how are we going to do it can we have can we get a life boat and can we have roses growing naturally over an arch over the boat do you think we can have some roses that will flower and look a little bit like the sea so you all these things were going through through our mind um and the rnli said I wanted a big I wanted a bigger one I wanted the Atlantic 85 but they don’t have many spare ones of those and it took me about 3 and a half months to get through through the red tape and rightly so because um they don’t just turn around and say yeah we’ll give you a boat or whatever so um that go through all the right procedures which it did and then finally they said yes you can have a boat well that was fantastic so you know that then gave us a platform then to say right okay yeah we can have we can design we’ll have the archers you know we’ll have ORS can if you see the ORS over there um I thought well that’d be lovely to have an obelisk so rotors can be climbing up the OES and just look natural you know coming you know instead of iron work obelisks and so on you know we’ve got um other archers at the back there we start thinking about Chelsea flower show Almost the day at finishes um you know from the previous year then around September time it’s usually my brother and myself sit down and design the stand then around October time Michael who who brings all these roses on in the glass houses for us we sit down together and we start planning and saying right we’re going to have purple Skyliner on this Arch we need about 20 on this Arch we’re going to have so and so so and so so then in the winter they’re potted there’s 3,000 roses go in the GL into the glass houses in February to get 1,00 roses spot on for Chelsea flower show so some go over a lot earlier and some just don’t make it so to get 1,200 spot-on roses um that you have to have about the 3,000 Mark so there an awful lot of work time effort and money you know we’ve got Michael who does you know um he does the a lot of the breeding and um bringing on the Roses you know for Chelsea he lives and breathes it 24 hours a day from really October so and then nothing gets wasted because in natural fact you can then sell them at your Nursery exactly oh yeah nothing gets wasted all these 1200 roses we’re hoping on Saturday we’ll sell quite a few that helps cover uh the hotel bills it helps cover fuel etc etc because it’s very expensive um to do Chelsea then the other uh so we’ll May hopefully sell three Excuse Me 3 or 400 and then the other roses then go back to the nursy when we’re Tiding them up here we give them what we call is the Chelsea chop you chop them down you just throw away the tops and they go back to the nursery as a skeleton and then normally by um August September time they come out again for their second flush we can sell another 3 or 400 of those then those the rest that we don’t sell we bring on for the following Chelsea so climbers and Ramblers that are this height on these archers by the end of September the following year or that coming year they’re that height so we can then bring them on and we’ll use them for 3 or four years so everything is rotated or sold or recycled to bring us back to where we are today there’s one thing that I don’t think you may remember remember but in 2022 I did a balcony Garden you did out there a very very small balcony and was it Chevy Chase or something like that brilliant Chevy Chase and high my memory is so bad but remember that that’s right and you just wanted one rose that would help you and I believe it did help you it really did and what I wanted to tell you was that was the plant that stopped the queen and she stopped in front of my garden she asked me to come and speak to her and the first thing that she said was I do quite like your roses so I just wanted to say thank you very much yeah isn’t that brilliant well unfortunately both of my roses unived themselves but it was my fault so I’m going to have to come to the nursery to come and get some Replacements can you tell us where is your Nursery well the the nursery is um in atbar just just uh 15 mil south of Norwich so we’re in between Norwich and fford on the a11 so it’s easy enough to find we’ve got lovely display Gardens probably about 2 Acres display Gardens which are now coming out in flower now and uh my brother who’s the head Gardener there um is always at hand for giving help and advice and honestly it almost looks as though it’s like a National Trust garden and we don’t charge anybody to come into the garden you know they just be lovely if people come along have a cup of tea have a cake maybe buy a rose or another plant because we do lots of other different uh plants at the nursery um and it’s a you know it’s a it’s a joy to wander around and we’ve got so many experts we’ve got people like myself who been there 30 40 years with lots and lots of knowledge so a destination to come to oh but I am looking forward to it hopefully I will see you very very soon thank you now as a balcony Garden myself I could not wait to see the balconies and I was not disappointed the first balcony I saw was called Tommy’s Cuisine the no bonsai garden and this Garden was all about no waste just like I do on on my garden this Garden uses Leaf litter as a mulch the garden features home composting and also is a plastic free balcony Garden the designers created a really beautiful space and these wooden containers at the front have been planted to create an barrier which creates privacy along the garden it’s giving tranquil Woodlands my name is Michaela trinker and I’ve designed lamia vansia balcony Garden for CH Clow show 2024 so I don’t have a sponsor and therefore I was able to choose my own brief and uh so what felt comfortable to me was going back to my Heritage I’m Italian and I lived there I had my childhood years in Italy and I was um maybe an hour away from Venice so I visited Venice a lot and so the brief says it’s for a mature couple who enjoy traveling and they would like to recreate a slice of Venice on their balcony to get a little bit of uh Shelter From the the the direct sun uh I’ve created a Pergola which will create dappled shade the clients have their own Gardens they can still see their own garden they can see far reaching View views uh and also from their other spaces so from their Garden or from Neighbors The View back is picturesque and it’s it’s almost like a romantic scene I think it’s absolutely beautiful what I love as well is the how you managed to age the water really keep it in of the the C so how did you go about designing that back so started off as a little sketch of where I thought the placement of bricks would look good I sourced uh some uh salvaged bricks right colors that I wanted uh we created brick slips from them and then we placed them on boards and then placed them on the wall and then we rendered artistically on top so there’s two two and a half layers of render on top which we then were able to scratch off sometimes with a bit of a paintbrush we we brushed it with a sponge there was a few different processes just to make it look as natural as possible and aged and aged and the same with the the window frame and the door frame obviously they are Timber we’ve tried to make it look like Stone really awesome and then what I noticed as well with your it’s not just there is a hanging element can you so uh firstly I wanted an overhead planter and I wanted to have the uh the over flowing plants just kind of something that draws the eye up but has more visual interest just another space for plants just to maximize the amount of space that you can create um the the shape is eight-sided uh it has a hole in the center so you can see the sky right through and another space for plants to come through uh but the reason that it’s that shape is that um you’ll find that a lot of uh patas uh in Venice will have water fountains or or uh ston work sometimes they’re drain covers that are that shape with the planting I’m guessing the planting is a Dr tolerance so the planting is Mediterranean inspired palette slightly English we still we’ve got the rose uh so it’s a bit of a mix uh but yes all the plants here are quite happy uh they they will tolerate some drought uh which I think is important with our changing climate I also noticed in terms of watering and the drought tolerance side that your mulch is very different not mulch no so I’ve got aspidistra that’s just got a leaker um which is quite a standard interior plant thing to do uh so I think the idea with that really is if you think in the winter oh God we’re going to have a really really cold week you just bring that pot in and it’s and you have it you enjoy it as your indoor plant um the rest of the pots have got a uh muscle Mulch and uh so there’s a mixture of crushed and then whole shells as decorative on top um and the thinking behind that was that in uh Venice they used to farm muscles and I think that muscles muscle shells uh can add calcium to the soil so potentially it’s also very good for the soil so you have some full shells and then some crushed yes there’s crushed as a base layer and then we’ve put whole ones on top so you can really see what it is and it becomes a decorative element well thank you so much for spending some time with us today and I think we have going to be taking away quite a lot of ideas from this Gard it is really stunning good luck for the judging tomorrow thank you Jason yeah I’m Tom banister and I have created this um Oasis called the Eco theapy Garden tell us more what is the client brief what’s the story behind this Garden the uh the garden is for a a professional Gardener as gardeners we instinctively know how good it is to be gardening and what how how good that is for our health and mental well-being uh and then recently I’ve been reading quite a lot about cold plunge therapy cold water therapy and so I was trying to combine the two uh so the gardener would be out working all day and then theyd need a place to come home and rest their aching limbs I I noticed it’s not just the bath there’s lots of running water in this Garden why was that important to you to include uh I think on top of uh like we just mentioned gardening uh cold plunge therapy sound is important to relax relax the mind um and and that’s also same with the color scheme throughout just a cool green uh Garden so it’s calming so what’s your style of planting delicate intricate I think uh as the years go by though I’m forever finding myself studying micro detail planting that just naturalized uh whether I’m walking around the city uh my home my hometown I’m forever look looking up close to native plants that have uh naturalized like the Mosses or the little geraniums that’s actually probably the thing that interests me the most this Garden I think what’s been nice about it is it’s brutal in its hard element but it’s also delicate at the same time speaking of the city what is the location on the client brief of this Garden where is it to be found so it would be an inner city garden whether that be in central London or Central Manchester uh any in the city location with a small courtyard uh often in London you might have a courtyard and it be surrounded by neighboring buildings um and so these could be made modular the lightweight but about 50% of the weight of uh what they should be so the containers are all modular so you can pick them all up okay equally it could be made in situ amazing so what what are the containers made from uh it’s a a lightweight hypert um there’s um a coconut Coya in there um a perite I think the interesting thing is we we could replicate it uh on a large scale uh or you know we could just make it in situ if somebody was struggling for Access we could bring the materials in and and make it that way I think you’ve got an absolutely stunner of a garden I love looking at the reflections uh from the water it’s just it’s really stunning you should be really proud of it I appreciate it yeah no worries thank you so much all right jez um my name is Mike McMahan from Mike mcmah studio and I have done this Garden the Adel Shaw Godard jungl garden with my wife jie who’s also part of our studio tell us what is the theme behind this Garden so the theme of this Garden is a jungle or a jungl as we call it and and it’s the concept originally originated from our own balcony at King’s cross um which is actually smaller than this balcony and the deck in the middle um is a little bit bigger than what our balcony is and so we’ve kind of transported that idea of having a jungle on a balcony to here in on our balcony which is 2x 1 square met we have a couple of tree ferns tetronics a moose of ba Basu uh we have so many different tropical plants and we the reason why we came to Chelsea is because we’ve noticed that all over the UK and Ireland there’s hundreds of thousands of empty balconies and we just wanted to highlight that you can put in this day of global warming that we can put Greenery on these balconies and that even if it’s just a single pot or a single tree that you you don’t need to have a house and a garden to have a garden and then took us through the planting of this Garden so we have the tree fans like you have on your own balcony but I also see some noachian and that’s some fat here so what what’s the planting plan so the the planting merg the four layers of the rainforest from the canopy lay to the forest floor so on the top layer we have the banana trees we have the dixoni anarctica tree Ferns and the tetronics and then kind of moving down we have plants like the fatti japonic and some really sculptural exciting plants like a brass opsis mythus which has this beautiful Lea and there’s a Chinese Tulip Tree in there with a leaf that looks a little bit like a sumo wrestler and I I just absolutely love exotic exciting leaves um and the drama that you get from them so but then moving down again we have hostes and when the life comes through it just hits all these plants so magical there’s some really exciting plants in there like the spotty doy which has a beautiful leaf and then on the floor like what most people on a balcony will just just have your balcony with Planters we’ve planted the floor so it’s like a forest floor with with um mind your own business and other little floor other little mo um Ferns and all when you look in there all that’s missing is a little deer you could just imagine that there’s a deer especially with the um the planting on the floor this might not be something that a renter could do but the uh if you are a homeowner is this doable can you do this can you plant on the floor yes you can plant on the floor because on a lot of balconies there’s enough depth because there’s the structure below but then they build up from that to have your finished floor so below this there was 100 Mil of of uh space to your finished floor so we use that space to um to plant in and 100 Mil is actually enough for some smaller plants well you know obviously with a tree you need a much much deeper dep and and you know when you ask is it possible for somebody who’s renting well somebody who’s renting you can put it into like little pots and uh things like that so there’s loads of different tricks and ways to achieve a similar goal amazing and now I heard that your background is actually in architecture so has that helped Inspire your design a little bit I’d say you would say that it is heavily inspired by architecture because is the back wall which is very dramatic is um it’s it it also Echoes the four layers of the rainforest so it kind of folds in and out and the pattern slightly changes I think it’s awesome and I think one of the things that I’m really conscious of is trying to get developers to get on board and thinking about their residents having access outside space like balconies moving forward forward do you think that this idea of Architects putting the green space at the Forefront is something that we’re going to see more of I think this has to be Center to any development to highrise because as the Earth’s population gets bigger there’s less and less space so the aspiration for everyone to live in a house in a garden will diminish so if if the population have to live in highrise we should try and create the best outdoor space that we can create a bit that kills me is when I pass housing especially so social housing and it’s clear that there’s not enough storage inside the house and I see loads of suitcases on the balcony and I I think that is so unfair to whoever lives in there their their bit of outdoor space is taken up with storage so I think it’s fundamental that we need to start increasing the siid of the balconies but also not just creating a balcony that is a rail and a deck that we should start having Planters built into the design so it’s already there and if the planter is built in then somebody all they have to do is put in a plant and then off they go so I think that should be built into building RS and then if we do that then Greenery will start to grow up and around the building I agree 100% thank you so much thank you for spending that time uh talking to us and I hope you enjoy the rest of the show well thank you so much and I’m a huge fan of you and your work so thank you in the UK we’re dealing with intense droughts during summer but also a lot of flooding during winter if your garden regularly floods what can you do my name is NY Slade I’m a journalist author and garden designer well we’re at Chelsea flower show and this is the flood re flood resilient Garden which was designed by me and Ed barsley my co-designer to give people lots of inspiration on flood resilience in small spaces so the garden itself is really quite compact for it’s 9 M by 6 which is about the same size as a fairly normal Urban Garden we set ourselves a brief you do that if you’re designing your garden at Chelsea and it’s a professional couple an ordinary terorist house with an ordinary Garden they’ve been flooded before what they want is a garden which is usable when it’s wet or has been very wet or when it’s still raining which is why you’ve got a a raised deck here and and a covered area above us um it needs to be bright it needs to be vibrant it’s got to be it’s got to celebrate water so rather than having that fear of being flooded again you think well how can we use the water that lands on the roof how can we enjoy it and the planting scheme particularly it’s it’s friendly it’s domestic scale so we’ve got lots of plants like Willows and like um uh Aces and and all sorts of things which are really quite easy to get a hold of but put in a beautiful design and do these plants work well in damp soil is that why you’ve selected some of these plants well what we’ve done with this Garden as a demonstration is to extend the landscape by creating highs and lows so you’ve got a mounded area and you’ve got a pond so it’s based on um Suds sustainable Urban drainage systems but also good horiculture which I think understanding Gardens and gardening is going to what is going to be what gets us through the climate crisis as far as we can but gives us that agency so we can do things so if you create a mound or lift things up or in a smaller space just create a raised bed you end up cuz water always runs downwards you end up with a much more well- drained area and things like fruit trees and roses and panies everybody loves them and you think well if I’ve got a garment that’s mostly soggy then how can I possibly grow these things I love the answer is lift them up out of the water by any means so I also see that we’ve got quite a lot of water here these water BS well we’ve got a water feature here which is made from recycled uh old water water tanks uh and this we’ve had manufactured into a beautiful cascading water feature which traps the water from the roof so it’s still in the garden it doesn’t flood your garden it doesn’t run off hard surfaces into the road and overwhelm the sewers and and and you know poison the surface at the end of the thing and you know overloading of of of sewers is a real real issue but if we can stop the water and keep it in our Gardens by disconnecting our drain pipes and creating spaces for the water to go um we can all make a little um a little step of progress in that sense so these are a beautiful feature but also it’s a way of storing water to use in the garden later and the other things is we got a smart water butt and I think there’s a real issue with water butts is they everyone understands they’re a good thing but they’re really ugly they’re so ugly so ugly I I I’m well behind saving water I do have a water but I don’t love it I have it because I need to have it I wish I could have 10 I’ve got a very small garden at home it’s not it’s no bigger than this um so we’ve kind of redesigned a water butt again to match our galvanized tanks and how does the water B work well when it rains the water fills it up but this is actually a Smart Water buts so it’s attached to technology which is attached to uh the weather forecast so one of the issues with um water buts is that when it rains most of them are full already we’re very conservative as gardeners we don’t like to uh uh we don’t like to use water if we don’t have to we got save it for for the best uh but actually with this water but it can be programmed so that it will release water ahead of the rainstorm which runs into the garden it Waters all the plants it wets the soil and if you think about how really dry soil water when it rains just runs off the top and how wet soil absorbs it it means you can actually use the soil to take up quite a lot of the water that falls out of the sky and you still you still got your resources there cuz it’ll fill up against its empty how can we take elements of your garden and then Implement them into our balconies into our PS into the courtyards well I think even in a balcony um or a courtyard or a patio you can still Harvest water you can you know find find some pretty way of collecting it even if you had a nice bucket and and have that storage you can still have a water feature um you can have raised beds for that drainage I mean Courtyards they’re very often shaded um and they’re often quite deep down so you do they’re often very damp places but lifting things up in my garden um it’s not so much a wet thing my Garden’s increasingly wet so I am starting to build a a swell a channel a rain Garden at the bottom just to capture the water and it goes through so it doesn’t run into the lane at the back so creating barriers but also as I’ve demonstrated in this garden planting really really densely so you layer the planting so you got layers of trees and layers of shrubs and layers of perennials so every raindrop it hits um a whole set of leaves on the way down it’s a long time before it hits the ground amazing thank you thank you so much for taking the time to have a talk with us you’re very welcome loveely to meet you thank [Applause] you now the weather is absolutely atrocious right now and everybody has been stuck here in the Pavilion but that has not been a bad thing at all because I found a whole category here that probably doesn’t get as much attention as it should the category is called all about plants and as the title suggests it is all about the plants now often gardening can seem quite serious and sometimes quite boring but I found a garden here in the floral Marquee that’s all about Joy it’s about fun it’s about color and there are loads of ideas in this Garden that I think that we can pick up and put into our small spaces now often when we think about gardening we think about straight lines and order but this Garden is the complete opposite there are curves there are bends there is absolute chaos and yet it somehow feels really really cohesive the garden’s called The penlon Joy Garden and the garden does what it says on the tin the designer Penelope really went out on the limb to work out how do you make a garden fun and quirky she ripped up the rule book and added in things like curves bright bold colors and a really incredible planting plan and this is so easy to replicate in a container garden if you want to add a little bit of joy to your garden maybe all of your pots don’t need to be the same color and they don’t need to be the same height what you can do is switch things up change your pots around and then incorporate a really bold colorful planting plan and then maybe within your planting plan think about how are you going to get a bit of height into your garden Penelope has chosen trees that actually have a little bit of variation to the stems they’re not straight in fact penlon is a young people’s disability Sports charity and only 5% of young people with disabilities are in work and so the five trees here represent that 5% after the show The Garden is going to be relocated back to the charity and you can just tell that the young people are going to really enjoy this space I wanted to go outside and head over to one of the Big Show Gardens and break that down for you but child Mother Nature had other plans you guys it is absolutely chucking it down with rain out here at Chelsea and my camera equipment is getting super wet so we’re not going to see any of the Big Show Gardens today I’m afraid if you want that you can go watch the live coverage what we are going to do is we’re going to go inside into the Pavilion and I’m going to go on the hunt and see what kind of things I can find to help us small space gardeners so let’s get going for me the most striking and reflective Garden happened to be this one it was so far removed from joy in fact this Garden is about grief and a place to stop and reflect and recollect your thoughts hi I’m Katherine Holland I’m a G designer and this year I’ve worked with Su Rider to create the SE Rider grief kind Garden at rhs Chelsea flower show in terms of your client brief what what was your client brief how did you go about designing this space so I wanted to make essentially a green hug that people could come and sit in and feel either safe to talk about their grief to other people or it just gave them somewhere that they felt like they could just come and have a moment of reflection to think of a loved one that had died and how did your planting kind of reflect your client so I had feedback from hospice staff hospice patients impatients and also the sort of space that I could have done with when I was first grieved and a lot of people said they wanted color in the garden but not necessarily overpowering color which is why I tried to have lots of different color but none of it is overpowering it’s not it’s not saying kind of like look at me look at me it all kind of just mels softly into one another and how did you go about doing that did you start off with a list of plants or did you start off with a color wheel so it was important to me because this has being relocated to a hospice um I wanted to make a space that people could connect with in different ways so it might be whether it’s just something you look at and it’s just like the interesting textures of leaves or something that’s tactile or fragrance or gives you sound from either pollinating insects visiting or from grasses rustling in the wind so I did a lot of research on like the different layers of the planting I can make up and how to go about creating like these different sensory experiences with the different plants and from what I remember last year we saw you in the balcony container category that’s right and so a lot of a lot of my viewers here they are really interested in small spaces like balconies so how can we take a beautiful garden like this and transform that into a container setting I think yeah I think you can definitely do something on a smaller sale in containers I mean one of my tips last year and what I would say to anybody who’s got a balcony gun is don’t be afraid to use height so get a lovely multi- stemmed shrub or a small tree and put it in a pot because the height instantly makes a fa space feel bigger and also having a bit of a canopy and something that’s kind of a bit of protect bit protective just instantly I think I don’t know I think it makes the space feel bigger I agree and I think maybe incorporating some of your uh planting in terms of a milder calmer cooler color palette could work as well definitely and I think when you’ve got a limited space you want pants that are just going to perform for you throughout the year and we just keep on giving so for example napas are great so cat Min is brilliant for containers because it doesn’t mind it dries out a little bit you can chop it back you can do essentially a Chelsea chop so you get a flush of flowers now and then you cut it back and then you get a a load more flowers later in the summer you know that is the second time today that we’ve heard Chelsea chop so this is one thing that we are all going to be taken away from this whole video is the Chelsea chop exactly but I think you’ve got an absolutely stunning garden and I think you should be really really proud of yourself thank you yeah it hasn’t sunk in yet but I’m so thrilled I’m so thrilled for the SE Rider and you know hopefully it’s going to really help people open up and have conversations we’ve already had people coming to us today and just sort of telling us about someone that they love that has died and how how this space mean something to them and that’s what this is about it’s about creating somewhere that Sparks conversations and help people feel that they can talk about their grief I think that’s so so important well thank you so much for inviting us in I know you’ve got an after hours party to attend now so I’m going to let you go all right thank you thank you so much [Laughter] now this video is slightly chaotic I don’t have an outro for you but instead of an outro what I do have are the show gardens just as I was leaving the rain started to ease off slightly so here’s a Whistle Stop look at some of the gardens now this was the Netflix Bridgeton garden and my oh my look at it it is stunning I now see why I couldn’t get anywhere near this Garden this morning that’s also one of my Chelsea top tips don’t come too early because let me tell you you’re not going to see anything if you come in the afternoon you’ll have a higher chance of seeing some of the show gardens now this is the St James’s Garden imagine each one of these bricks was hand painted to age it up and make it look like it will fit into St James’s Park I hope that you guys are really appreciating this it is cold it is wet I have no umbrella CH this is investigative journalism okay now this is a feature garden and this feature Garden is called repurposed every single one of these big items and structures is repurposed from an old show Garden it was pulled out storage in order to make this Garden how amazing is that and that shows the rhs’s commitment to sustainability so the light is beginning to fade right now the rain is getting heavier and heavier but what I really did want to do is show you some of these stunning Gardens now these are called Sanctuary Gardens they’re actually smaller than the large show gardens but on paper once again they may seem you know a little bit of Out Of Reach for some of us but there’s some really cool ideas in here look how simple and beautiful the color palette is there the light is fading sorry guys but everything marries together really really well and in terms of height they’ve managed to get so much height and structure into the garden and these are all principles that we can do in our own small spaces now this Garden behind me actually has containers in fact I learned today from Sue Kent that the containers are almost like Lego pieces so you can mold them and shape them stack them up as high as you need to which makes this Garden super super accessible so in actual fact this Garden is really about gardening in containers and finding ways to get a little bit of height in there by stacking up those containers e I had the chance to enjoy this Garden in the sunlight on day one of chel and I absolutely loved it I regret not filming it at the time but it it was because I was just so absorbed by it this is a shade garden it’s full of burs and Aces and this is a Japanese designer who is just phenomenal this Garden is so intricate so beautiful and if you just walk past it you’d think that this Garden has been there for years but in natural fact it’s 3 weeks old if that one key element of this Garden that I love is the fact that there are so many different levels it’s not flat at all and we can do the same thing in our small spaces by having containers at different heights and different levels you can use bricks or wood to raise the height of our planter now this designer is an absolute Master when it comes to detail so things like the Moss are all planted and stuck onto these rocks just to make it feel more aged so although it looks like naturalized Moss everything has been put in there himself or his planting team and that completely changes the overall feel of the garden it’s absolutely spectacular it’s such a shame that it is nighttime and you can’t see it properly I hope that you’ve enjoyed hanging out with me today and hopefully you’ve enjoyed this video now my next show is going to be Gardener world live so I cannot wait to take you along on the journey hopefully I will see you all again very very soon bye