Embracing weeds and native plants is focus of 2023 Chelsea Flower Show
Wildflowers and what many would call “weeds” abound in this image of a garden design created for the Chelsea Flower Show.
Chelsea Flower Show designers make room for wildlife
If we can take anything away from the 2023 Chelsea Flower Show, it’s that wildlife gardening and weeds are the future.
Forget grass. Presenters from the BBC were quick to note that not a single one of the magnificent demonstration gardens included a single blade of traditional grass.
Instead, the landscape designers focused on native plants aimed at providing assistance to wildlife – everything from native bees and caterpillars to birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles.
In doing so, they fully embraced using what many traditional gardeners would call “weeds” in the designs.
It’s not the first year some of the world’s top designers looked to “weeds” as a primary source of planting for their outstanding show gardens.
Just last year a gold medal went to a garden design celebrating garden rewilding after the reintroduction of beavers to an area in England.
“Gardeners have to remember that it is not about what they want, but about what the land wants.”
Natural gardens are not new to Chelsea. They have been gaining ground over the years and stealing the spotlight from more traditional garden styles as far back as 2002 when Irish-born landscape designer Mary Reynolds shocked the garden establishment as the youngest designer to win a gold medal at Chelsea with her naturalistic approach to gardening.
Mary, whose story was made into the movie Dare to Be Wild, remains an ambassador for natural gardens writing a comprehensive and inspiring book called The Garden Awakening, and continually speaking out against much of today’s traditional landscaping practises.
For More: check out my review of her book Garden Awakening
“Gardeners have to remember that it is not about what they want, but about what the land wants,” Reynolds once told the BBC.
So, maybe it was no surprise that war has been officially declared against traditional gardening at Chelsea.
“The war against traditional gardens is about to go nuclear,” reported the The Daily Telegraph in response to the latest weed-friendly garden designs at this year’s show.
In an informative article in Phys.org, the author Brigette Duseau explores the increasing acceptance of using weeds in landscape design
Duseau points out that this year, “no less than one third of the 12 main gardens in the competition feature weeds such as nettles, knapweed, dandelions, chickweed or buttercups that generations of gardeners have spent their lives rooting out.”
In fact, the six-time Chelsea Flower Show gold-medal landscape designer Cleve West included as many as 19 weed species in his garden, constructed around the dilapidated remains of a 19th-century house.
Weeds in the garden design – built for a charity that helps young homeless people – proved to be the perfect metaphor for these youth who should not be discarded.
“Weeds play a very significant part in repairing land …. They are pioneer plants that go in and repair the soil," he said.
“They sort of have a microbial activity in the soil that helps make soils healthy, fertile and it provides food for early pollinators—even homes for some invertebrates,” he told Duseau.
"So they play a very important part in biodiversity."
Move away from traditional to more natural gardens
Over the years leading up to this year’s show, there has been a growing move away from traditional non-native plants to more native plants and “weeds.”
And, if you are thinking weeds have no place in your garden, let me say that the results from this year’s gardens were simply stunning. Then again, they always are at the Chelsea Flower Show.
If you are not aware of the annual Chelsea Flower Show every May, you may be surprised by the BBC’s comprehensive coverage of the 5-day flower and design show.
Another example of the use of wildflowers in the Chelsea Flower Show garden designs can be seen in this image. Notice also that the flowers are planted in a loose, naturalistic style, rather than as single specimens.
Go HERE For the complete listing of BBC coverage. Go HERE for the link to BBC’s YouTube coverage.
The British broadcaster provides us YouTube watchers across the pond with hours and hours of coverage from interviews with British celebrities (think Downton Abby) about their impressions of the show and their personal gardening challenges, to detailed analysis of the 12 main large display gardens that are part of a total of 36 total garden design installations. There are features on the incredible flower growers that somehow manage to get all the plants flowering during the show, new plant introductions and examples of how to use more traditional flowers. There are also impressive displays for small balcony and patio container gardens geared to those of us with smaller garden spaces.
The amount of information on plants, garden design and philosophy is second to none, and it’s all there for us to take advantage of on our smart, high definition, large-screen TVs – for free.
What more could we ask for in life.
If you are not taking advantage of your smart TV and internet provider to tune in to the best gardening channels on YouTube, you have no idea what you are missing. Do yourself a favour and take a few minutes to learn how to plug into this wealth of gardening knowledge and entertainment. Just be aware, the rabbit hole is deep. And if you do not have a “smart TV,” it’s well worth purchasing one just to watch the gardening channels alone.
I’m already addicted to YouTube gardening channels, including Linda Vater from Oklahoma City, The Native Plant Gardener from New Jersey and a host of others, but when Monty Don and the Chelsea Flower Show is being streamed via YouTube, it’s always prime watching.
Unlike Home & Garden Television that is nothing but real estate shows, the vast number of gardening programs available on YouTube more than make up for Home & Garden’s severe inadequacies.
But enough of the free promotion for YouTube. It’s time to get back to the Chelsea Flower Show.
For a fun look at images from the show, be sure to catch the Guardian newspaper photo feature here.
The outdoor laboratory in the Royal Entomological Society Garden that embraces the use of weeds and wildflowers to encourage insects.
Best Chelsea Flower Show gardens featuring weeds and wildflowers
• The Royal Entomological Society Garden (silver medal winner) Anyone looking to gain knowledge about attracting insects to their yard will benefit from paying close attention to this garden design by landscape architect Tom Massey.
Here again, weeds have their place, including dandelions and clover.
The design includes an outdoor laboratory for visitors to study the insect life in the garden. Visitors to the garden are taken down into the landscape, offering an ‘insect’s eye view’ and a space in which to study. The lab’s roof structure is inspired by a compound insect eye and the lab is used for real scientific research, monitoring and studying insects visiting the garden.
Diverse topography across the site — rammed earth floors, hoggin pathways, dead wood, piles of rubble, bare sand and gabion walls — provide numerous and varied habitats for insects. Water in still pools and flowing streams provides additional important insect habitats and adds interest to the aesthetic and soundscape of the garden.
A dead tree ‘sculpture’, cut into rings and elevated on steel poles, ‘floats’ over biodiverse planting and a standing dead tree and tree stump provide further sculptural habitat. Planting for pollinators and a wide range of other beneficial insects forms a beautiful and resilient scheme that will provide year-round food, habitats and interest.
Large pieces of concrete and aggregate is interspersed with wildflowers giving the garden a natural, overgrown look.
• Centre for Mental Health’s The Balance Garden (Silver medal) The garden uses crushed site waste as aggregates producing a wealth of wildflowers, grasses and hardy shrubs that thrive in stressful environments, as well as sand piles and habitat layers for wildlife.
Large concrete pieces reclaimed from waste salvage make up a central area overlooking a clear pool. Suspended steel walkways allow movement through the space and access to the wild planting layers.
At the heart of the garden is a ‘mushroom den’ made from a reclaimed steel-clad shipping container. The planting layers contour from wetland towards a denser, shadier canopy of food forestry and ‘edimentals’ while ‘weeds’ are celebrated as an important part of urban ecology.
• The Fauna & Flora International Garden Designed by Chelsea award-winning garden designer, Jilayne Rickards, and landscaped by Tecwyn Evans, of Living Landscapes, the Fauna & Flora Garden maps the journey of an ecotourist on a gorilla trek, tracing a rough track through a succession of lush and changing landscapes.
The design uses thistles, brambles and nettles to illustrate a typical gorilla habitat.
The path eventually leads to a gorilla nest – set among bamboo and other typical gorilla foodplants – and a towering waterfall, surrounded by a variety of weird and wonderful plants commonly found at high altitudes.
This ‘gorilla garden’ not only tells the story of the endangered species and its precious habitat, but also aims to raise public awareness of the critical importance of protecting nature around the world, and how this can be best achieved by putting people and collaboration at the heart of conservation efforts.
Don’t miss Horatio’s Garden – A gold medal and the Best in Show
The Horatio garden was inspired by a young man who was researching the creation of an accessible garden at the spinal injuries unit of the Salisbury District Hospital where he volunteered, before he was tragically killed at the age of 17 in a polar bear attack during an expedition to Svalbard.
The award-winning design explores how gardens can be viewed differently from a variety of perspectives – with a focus on how spinal patients may be forced to view the garden from different angles dependent on their injuries.
A water feature not only adds sensory experiences but is important for attracting wildlife into the garden which proved to be one of the most important features spinal patients communicated to the garden designers.
For more information on winning garden designs, be sure to check out the work of Country Living here.
Seven sanctuary gardens in 2023 show
This year’s show gardens included seven sanctuary gardens – smaller gardens that focus on the benefits of gardening on our well being. Central to each design was the benefits to wildlife and sustainability the gardens were able to offer both gardeners and those who visit.
One woodland inspired garden designed by Thomas Hoblyn celebrated British crafts – from a treelike medal arbour to embroidered cushions and candlesticks.
The garden’s colour palette was based on three colours that make up a single forget-me-not-flower, including violet, blue and red. Two zones make up the garden including a wetland meadow of sedges and rushes, and a shaded woodland glade.
Centre for Mental Health’s The Balance Garden
Another inspirational garden is The Balance Garden that explores the mental health benefits nature can bring to our lives and ways we can bring more of it into our gardens. The designers are quick to point out that the garden encompasses a myriad of wildflowers – plants many gardeners would consider to be weeds.
“We’ll be educating people about the classic question of ‘what is a weed?’ and realigning people’s perception – if it looks beautiful, why not keep it?” explained garden designer Jonathan Davies to Gardens Illustrated. (link to the full story)
There are too many gardens in the show to attempt to cover them all, but plan on spending several hours – up to ten – watching the BBC’s first-rate coverage. It certainly is more bingeworthy than most Netflix shows.
A rainy day is the perfect opportunity to settle in for tours of the gardens and expert information on plants, shrubs, trees and helping our local wildlife.
Some of the gardens you’ll want to pay special attention to include:
• South Korean environmental artist and designer Jihae Hwang explores a rugged mountain garden design in her garden: A Letter from a Million Years Past. The design explores a primeval forest with massive rocky outcrops inspired by the Jiri Mountains, known as the Mother Mountain of Korea. The garden is the perfect example of how we can incorporate boulders in our landscape and the plants that thrive in these harsh, but natural areas. It’s also an example of how beauty is not dependent on a flush of colourful flowers.
A combination of native plants, including Black Eyed Susans and lobelia create a natural habitat for insects, birds and other garden wildlife.
Learning from Chelsea: Using “weeds” in our own gardens
If we can learn anything from the designers at the 2023 Chelsea Flower Show it is that weeds, or what many of us like to call wildflowers, not only belong in our gardens, but can be a beautiful, natural addition that creates habitat for wildlife big and small.
Of course, one gardener’s weed is another gardener’s flower and that can change dramatically depending on what horticultural zone you are gardening in. Native plants are very dependent on that zone, so it’s important to find out what plants are truly native to your area and do your best to get seed or locally grown wildflowers.
It’s also a good idea to plant the flowers in more of a loose, cottage-style garden rather than single plants trying to survive on their own. Nature does not really work this way, so there is no reason that we should be bound by growing plants in neat little groups.
Designers at the Chelsea show combined both methods to give the gardens a loose, but still organized feel that would be presentable to the majority of visitors, but still provide wildlife with a natural habitat.
Even if a more natural approach to gardening is not your cup of tea, consider setting aside a small part of your garden where you step back and let nature take over.
You might just be surprised with the results and I’m sure you’ll enjoy not having to weed and worry about every little plant that shows up in your naturalized garden.