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Top garden designer Sarah Eberle said she would not design for RHS Chelsea again.\u00a0 She had bucketfuls of Chelsea gold medals and awards already, but she was lured out of retirement by a cause dear to her heart: the importance (and vulnerability) of those marginal areas of nature in which humans find content.<\/p>\n
That cause proved dear to more hearts than hers.\u00a0 She won the top award, \u2018Garden of the Year\u2019.<\/p>\n
Entitled \u2018On the Edge\u2019, and commissioned by the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England, Eberle\u2019s garden aimed to raise awareness of \u2018the fragility of rural landscapes, focusing on vulnerable spaces including ordinary fringe landscapes constantly under threat\u2019.<\/p>\n
Deliberately eschewing the exotic, Eberle achieved this award through sheer skill, using plants more familiar from a Sunday walk than a garden centre.<\/p>\n
The design centred around the massive figure of a sleeping woman carved from a tree trunk.\u00a0 As Eberle pointed out, you have something like six seconds to grab the attention of the passers-by and lure them in to take a closer look.\u00a0 The figure of Gaia, or Mother Nature, certainly achieved that.\u00a0 Her willow \u2018hair\u2019 flowed onto the top of a dry stone wall while her hand trailed in a stream, linking different elements of the garden.<\/p>\n
The symbolism may not have been subtle, but the planting definitely was.\u00a0 Inspired by her upbringing on a Devon smallholding, Eberle chose native British and Irish plants, many often dismissed as weeds, the kind of grasses and flowers you might find on the margins of towns, villages or even building sites.\u00a0 Careful placing created a naturalistic effect, with no hard edges, making the point about our human need for something soft and subtly beautiful to lift our lives, particularly if you live in an urban area where reconnecting with nature is even more precious and difficult to achieve.<\/p>\n
Every element of the garden was sustainable and the garden itself will be relocated to a regenerated housing development in Sheffield.<\/p>\n
The RHS itself, however, has come under attack during Chelsea week.\u00a0 From displaying a Range Rover\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 to promote its new sponsor, to insisting on its growers using only peat-free compost (try growing carnivorous plants without peat), criticism has taken a little of the \u2018gilt off the gingerbread\u2019.\u00a0 One critic commented that \u2018the RHS flagship event has a lithium mine on a driveway as a main focus\u2019.<\/p>\n
That didn\u2019t stop the great, the good and the garden fanatics paying over \u00a3140 each to enjoy the miracle that is perfect plants arranged in perfect displays.\u00a0 Or, more miraculous still, gardens that look as though they have evolved over decades but which have been carted in by lorry and installed in a matter of weeks.\u00a0 Oh, and gnomes were back, allowed free entry after years in the wildnerness.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s hope that Chelsea gives Eberle\u2019s \u2013 and the CPRE\u2019s – message the good publicity it deserves.<\/p>\n
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