HORTUS ON TOUR - HAMPTON COURT PALACE GARDEN FESTIVAL

After a year's delay (our tickets had originally been for the July 2020 show) it was time for Hortus and parents to head down the M1 to Hampton Court for my first visit to the Garden Festival.  This week, I was going to write about my garden as usual and pop in Hampton Court as one of my Six, but there was just too much to include so it's getting a whole Six on Saturday to itself.

Just to let you know this is not a review of the show, just photos of the bits a really liked.  Spoiler alert - the crashed aeroplane wasn't one of them.

The clouds looked a little ominous, but in the end the rain stayed away.

1. Tom Stuart-Smith Iconic Horticultural Hero Garden

Didn't the RHS used to award people medals?  Well nowadays it appears they've gone a bit Marvel Universe and declared them to be Iconic Heroes.    Well Tom Stuart-Smith does seem to have managed to live up to his billing with this design, described as a planting rather than a garden.  It features drought tolerant plants that had managed to stand up to some torrential downpours the night before.

You get that photo twice because it looked so lovely.  

Plenty of Echinacea, Perovskia, Nepeta, Macleaya and Agastache wove through the beds.

There was just a little shot of orange from the Kniphofia at one end of the garden.  The full plant list is here.

Also additional hero points go to Tom for using Sunnyside Rural Trust to grow the perennial plants.  They provide training and work experience for people with learning disabilities and they have done a wonderful job.

2. Colour

In the show gardens there was a predominance of bluish purples, pale pinks and creams with silver.  This is Tom Stuart-Smith again, but I did joke that they must have all chosen their plants from the same trolley.

3. RHS Garden for a Green Future

The design of this garden is also aimed at growing plants for our changing climatic conditions.  They were chosen to tolerate summer drought and winter wet, with stone lined gullies which would take away excess rain.  Despite the drought tolerant brief, the garden has a lovely lush woodland feel.

It was hard to see into the centre of the garden, but on the tele programme it looked great.

4. Down Memory Lane

I was charmed by this garden, and more particularly by its make-do-and-mend greenhouse constructed from old windows and doors.  With its windy brick path and water feature made from an old watering can, it could have descended into twee-ness, but didn't. 

Cosmos and tomatoes were jumbled in with roses.  I'm afraid my pictures don't quite do it justice.

5 Punk Rockery

I thought this garden was so inventive.  Its concept is to make the most of what is already in your garden, even if that is lumps of concrete and broken bricks and next to no decent soil.  

It was full of personality from the gravel of broken bricks and tile to the dustbin lid pond.  The large rocks are lumps of concrete.  The planting is designed to be happy with the poor soil.

  

I would certainly have found this very inspiring when I first started gardening.

6. The ones I want to take home

A couple of things caught my eye and will be on my list to order for next year.  

Firstly this lovely burgundy Allium.

And this very cute Rose, with its perfect little posies of flower, which I hadn't seen before. 

I did manage to buy a couple of tiny bare root Benton Iris from Plant Heritage, which I will attempt to keep alive.

That's all for this week.  Next week it will be back to my garden where the Roses require some serious dead heading.

Thanks as always to the Propagator for hosting Six on Saturday.