By the time I'd decided what the best garden was at Chelsea, I'd naturally run out of battery on my actual camera. So the phone had to stand in, a quick documentary shuffle around the garden, some words with the garden hosts, a drift through the murmur of the crowd to gauge temperature. It was interesting, but weird, and you wouldn't do it at home, the crowd said. But they really liked the big rock, front and centre in the photos below:
A bit like an underpass, someone said, and of course that's what drew me to it; the symbolic reconstruction of civic decay as decorative space; the delicate evocation of wild irises growing in choked drains, creepers tumbling down the side of motorway bridges. Who made the columns? I asked, but he didn't know. He suggested Living Concrete, but their website only mentions the beautiful concrete back-wall; I think they're from a construction supplier, the smallest size for a standard footbridge, or something like that.
The elevated drain and waterwall is eco-innovative. Grey water gravity-drains through the subtly slanted top drainage channel, filtering through mats of plants, emerging cleaner as it slithers over the huge resin silent pool logo (the blue water-wall, like a waterfall, but almost silent). Big raised boxes of scented flowers - irises, roses, fashionable fox-gloves might help combat the stink that would up build over time if you tried to make this work, or perhaps the slightly fetid smell would become part of it, as it did in a place near a reservoir outflow where I used to go and play as a child.
The menu tells me that ambient sound from the Surrey hills is playing from speakers, but I honestly don't really hear it, and I'm not sure it's the right choice anyway. The ambient sound from a midlands roundabout might work better; reassuring hum of traffic, the almost inaudible click of lights changing, the sudden flights of rooks and starlings feeding on the green (I'm thinking of Chieveley as I write this, which is very much a roundabout for the discerning interchange connoisseur).
There's plenty of coppery bits and bobs (foliage, paint, slug-repelling raised planters), as befits a gin garden. Probably proper heavyweight copper for the tiny shelf at the back, to match the eye-wateringly expensive bonsai. A giant Silent Gin bottle that looks like it's hastily exited a themed bar somewhere. One lonely and very luxurious chair, like a luxe millennial rehash of Concrete Island. The plants have been selected mainly on the grounds of being gin botanicals, but that actually makes for a lovely planting scheme - with the added bonus of low toxicity, if you're reduced to eating the greenery.
Here's a better view of the ground-level rill, a brick-width foot-trap that feels like it would be improved by decorative drain grill of some kind, but maybe they felt metalwork would be de trop, rather than another great opportunity to showcase their logo. But all this water does make the space enchantingly cool, a little patchwork of soft water and sun-warmed brick, urban oasis style. Birds in the rills and dragonflies buzzing in those extended gutters. Bees sipping at the pebbled soakaway. It has that secret hideaway feel, that hint of den, habitat, lair.
The garden won Silver Gilt, which is Silver-and-a-half, that magic category of the almost-winner. There's lots more going on that I haven't even mentioned - a tiny Plant-e generator powering some LED lights, trigger sensors for the soundscape, and a commitment to donate and reuse parts of the garden elsewhere, including for a short breaks charity for disabled children. But there is a tension in the design (which I like, but then I would) where the garden's mission statement is "to transport inner-city dwellers to the rural Surrey Hills, using scent and sounds powered by plant technology" but I actually leave the garden feeling fine about my inner city life and inner-city living - if we can make it look and feel and flow and grow like this.
The elevated drain and waterwall is eco-innovative. Grey water gravity-drains through the subtly slanted top drainage channel, filtering through mats of plants, emerging cleaner as it slithers over the huge resin silent pool logo (the blue water-wall, like a waterfall, but almost silent). Big raised boxes of scented flowers - irises, roses, fashionable fox-gloves might help combat the stink that would up build over time if you tried to make this work, or perhaps the slightly fetid smell would become part of it, as it did in a place near a reservoir outflow where I used to go and play as a child.
The menu tells me that ambient sound from the Surrey hills is playing from speakers, but I honestly don't really hear it, and I'm not sure it's the right choice anyway. The ambient sound from a midlands roundabout might work better; reassuring hum of traffic, the almost inaudible click of lights changing, the sudden flights of rooks and starlings feeding on the green (I'm thinking of Chieveley as I write this, which is very much a roundabout for the discerning interchange connoisseur).
There's plenty of coppery bits and bobs (foliage, paint, slug-repelling raised planters), as befits a gin garden. Probably proper heavyweight copper for the tiny shelf at the back, to match the eye-wateringly expensive bonsai. A giant Silent Gin bottle that looks like it's hastily exited a themed bar somewhere. One lonely and very luxurious chair, like a luxe millennial rehash of Concrete Island. The plants have been selected mainly on the grounds of being gin botanicals, but that actually makes for a lovely planting scheme - with the added bonus of low toxicity, if you're reduced to eating the greenery.
Here's a better view of the ground-level rill, a brick-width foot-trap that feels like it would be improved by decorative drain grill of some kind, but maybe they felt metalwork would be de trop, rather than another great opportunity to showcase their logo. But all this water does make the space enchantingly cool, a little patchwork of soft water and sun-warmed brick, urban oasis style. Birds in the rills and dragonflies buzzing in those extended gutters. Bees sipping at the pebbled soakaway. It has that secret hideaway feel, that hint of den, habitat, lair.
The garden won Silver Gilt, which is Silver-and-a-half, that magic category of the almost-winner. There's lots more going on that I haven't even mentioned - a tiny Plant-e generator powering some LED lights, trigger sensors for the soundscape, and a commitment to donate and reuse parts of the garden elsewhere, including for a short breaks charity for disabled children. But there is a tension in the design (which I like, but then I would) where the garden's mission statement is "to transport inner-city dwellers to the rural Surrey Hills, using scent and sounds powered by plant technology" but I actually leave the garden feeling fine about my inner city life and inner-city living - if we can make it look and feel and flow and grow like this.
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