Views on this years Chelsea

I must admit I too was quite shocked at the negative comments from Monty and Joe about the winning garden @AnniD and thought them both quite rude. I loved the winner so beautiful and calming.

 

I haven’t watched or heard their comments yet, we’re slowly catching up with the coverage. We thought the Forest Bathing Garden was nice, but that’s as exuberant as we could get about it. It looks better in the TV coverage than it did in real life because you can see more detail and get a sense of atmosphere. In real life, I felt all the trees prevented us from really seeing the garden. I understood that she felt having them all towards the edge would make it feel as if we were in the forest, maybe if there had been some structured gaps as if we were looking along a path into the centre that would have worked better.

It was also very grey, gloomy day weather wise so some of the detail was simply lost viewing glimpses from the outside.

watching some coverage yesterday reminded my of tow more favourites. Anne Marie Powells garden was joyful as was the No Adults Allowed, I would have loved a den like that when I was a child (in fact I would quite like one now)

 

I felt really sorry for the designer who won best in show. To get that fabulous accolade and then have Monty and Joe immediately after basically saying the judges had got it wrong must have been hurtful. If they wanted to have a discussion on judging, it should not have been framed as an issue with a particular winner, IMV.

 

I seem to recall they changed the judging / marking scheme several years ago to make it more objective and less subjective, so that the scores/awards didn't depend on whether the judges actually liked the garden or got an emotional reaction to it. People (and probably TV presenters) used to comment about the subjective judging, and now they're commenting about objective judging. Can't win, it seems.

 

Haven't seen all the TV shows yet butjust wanted to say that, whensetting out to design and build a show garden, the designers,builders and plantsmen and women know very clearly the criteria against which they will be judged, including matching their own brief, written by themselves, the quality of th ebuild, the quality of the plants and so on.

It is, to me, better to have a set of objective criteria against which to be judged so that personal taste doesn't affect the scores. Very often in past years, the best in show and People's Choice gardens have not been the same because the latter is more subjective as we can't get close enough to examin every detail and look at the whole effect.

 

I guess my biggest issue with the TV coverage of Chelsea is it doesn't seem to reflect how most people garden. I feel like the competitive aspect of show gardens (as someone said, its more of a fashion show) takes away some of the joy of the process.

A lot of the plants and varieties they talk about just don't seem to be that widely available. Overwhelmingly, where I live (and there are beautiful gardens round here), the same tried and tested, reliable plants are on sale everywhere, but its quite a challenge getting hold of anything that is too niche. Ordering online is a possibility, but its a bit of a faff to not be able to inspect before you buy.

Having said that, I'm sure there are great people there who absolutely love what they do, I think British horticulture is generally something to be proud of, and Chelsea mostly showcases that well. But its big business at the end of the day, and will always involve things that don't fit with our individual ethos.

 

I think that the issue now, is that the objective marking system, introduced for completely the right reasons, has now made it possible to build a garden, which scores incredibly highly, objectively, but that doesn't imo feel like a good garden. To my mind Tom Stuart Smith's garden, was by far the most beautiful, but it didn't win best in show.

 

@Erigeron One of the many joys of attending Chelsea is that you can pick up plant lists form the show gardens. In the Floral marquee you can talk to the nurserymen and women about the plants and whether they will suit your garden conditions and then place orders for later delivery.

The RHS also has an online plant finder feature which can be used to track down who grows what and who will deliver or need a visit.

 

It is fairly easy to find which Nursery supplied the plants for a particular garden, and then order the plants on line.
Some Nurseries are currently advertising plants that have been in Chelsea gardens.

 

This is exactly the point - beauty is in the eye of the beholder, people have different opinions on what feels like a good garden and the old scheme wasn't very fair to designers who made gardens that were on brief and technically and horticulturally excellent, but that the judges didn't like or warm to. Perhaps there's a middle ground somewhere.

 

Its beginning to sound like a cooking show on TV.

 

I was thinking that @pete. If a brief is written for a meal and it is achieved with technical perfection with all the boxes ticked, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it looks or tastes good !

 

Plus ... it may contain ingredients a lot of people might not like. Anchovies, say ...