Monday, July 27, 2009

Tatton Park in the rain

Subtitle: getting stuck in the mud, so you don't have to...
This year, I've been lucky enough to go to Malvern Spring Show and Gardeners' World Live, and now Tatton, my local show.

As always, a mixed bag of show gardens (although I wish I had just one tenth of the imagination of the designers), but some of them really caught my imagination.
Some I wasn't so keen on...
Glyndwr's Vision (Silver-Gilt) - a bit 'bedding' (not that there's anything wrong with bedding - Tatton is well known for its national flower bed competition - photos of those at a later date).

Time (Silver) - when I saw it on the TV I thought I liked it but close up it didn't grip me at all. Not to mention the fact that the wood is splitting after only a few days of Cheshire rain.

Those I liked...

Revolution Order Versus Chaos (Silver) - gardens don't half have pretentious names, don't they? This one was a real zinger - it sang out through the rain, mud and murk.

Time and the Bell (Gold) - sounded nice in the breeze and I enjoyed the effect of the grass against the bamboo.

The Lunch Hour Garden (Silver) - not many places of work have such beautiful places to sit and eat your sandwiches!



Quilted Velvet (Gold): Not so much for the planting (despite three gardens, I still haven't been brainwashed into buying Quilted Velvet loo roll) but for the contouring of the plot.




'So 80's (Silver) - as the 1980's were my formative teenage years, I felt some kinship with the bright colours used for the hard landscaping (and the fact they were playing Heaven 17's '(We Don't Need This) Fascist Groove Thang'). It looked bare on the TV, but outside of the neon flooring, there was lush, colour co-ordinated planting. Anyway, the '80s are back - just listen to some of the music in the charts nowadays.


Fibonaci Numbers in Nature (bronze) - I wasn't keen on a lot of this garden (not enough plants!) but I liked the tagliatelle at the back. Must be the devil's own job to weed bindweed from though.

Those I loved...

Cubed3 (Gold and best visionary garden). I loved this. Although it is very geometric, the tumbling cubes reminded me of the shattered rocks I'd seen the previous week in the Lake District, and it seemed full of energy.

Strictly Come Gardening (Gold). Rather twee name and concept but I loved the planting.

I may have accidentally bought a couple of plants...

5 comments:

Unknown said...

I absolutely adore Cubed3, so versatile and the background in Fibonaci Numbers in Nature is absolutely genius! I would love an arm for a combination of the two!

Fabulous post and great pics!

Ryan

Helen/patientgardener said...

Thanks for sharing these. I managed to miss most of the TV coverage sowas pleased to read this post. From your pics I can see your reasoning and think I would probably agree. As for the garden names I often wonder how them come up with them. Maybe they put some words into a hat and then pull them out and arrange into some sort of order!!

Arabella Sock said...

I'm another fan of Cubed3 - saw it on TV and it just leapt out at me.
I love landscapes with shattered rocks and you are absolutely right that is what it looks like! I think you could take that idea and use it in a garden without it having to be the 'whole' garden.

HappyMouffetard said...

There were more photos of show gardens but I didn't want to bore everyone. I managed to entirely miss the garden designed by Chris Beardshaw (I must have walked past it several times) but I'll be able to see it when it moves to Ness Botanic Gardens in 2010.

Sylvana said...

This was great. My son liked Cubed3 and I did too. I like the way that it looks like nature reclaiming industry - nature will always prevail in the end.