Jorge Rodriguez shared today’s photos, which offer a beautiful look at the garden Jorge and his company, The Chelsea Gardener, designed for the Chelsea Flower Show. Chelsea is one of the premier garden shows in the world, with countless designers creating gardens to showcase different design ideas.

The heat wave of 2022 presented huge issues in the maintenance of traditional British gardens. With the looming presence of climate change, the high cost of irrigation installation and water along with hose pipe bans, British gardeners will have to reconsider plant selection. Ultimately, the purpose of our garden is to demonstrate a climate-change-resistant planting scheme and how this can be incorporated into an attractive, functional urban garden.

Our garden is designed to maximize the limited space of typical urban gardens, whilst adapting to our changing climate through the utilization of drought-tolerant plants. An emphasis on sustainability is carried through the garden with the materials utilized in construction being of natural, bio-composite provenance.

Upon entry to the garden, you are greeted by a sentinel freestanding Albizia julibrissin (Zones 5–9) tree planted into a large clay planter. The filigree canopy provided by the silk tree produces a sense of enclosed sanctuary, and the loose feathery texture of the foliage contrasts strongly with the lines prominent throughout the rest of the garden.

Against the back wall is a series of three large, staggered containers. The angularity of these containers is broken by a combination of soft-textured foliage and trailing plants cascading over the edges.

Closer look at the clay planter

An inbuilt seating area invites a would-be visitor to enter, and a mirror placed beside it reflects the planting in the bed in front and further breaks the definitive contours of the garden.

The soft color palette of the flowers grown in the tallest back container contrasts with the saturated dark slate back-wall cladding. The addition of a dark backdrop and bright party boundaries also trick the eye into thinking the garden is larger.

 

Have a garden you’d like to share?

Have photos to share? We’d love to see your garden, a particular collection of plants you love, or a wonderful garden you had the chance to visit!

To submit, send 5-10 photos to gpod@taunton.com along with some information about the plants in the pictures and where you took the photos. We’d love to hear where you are located, how long you’ve been gardening, successes you are proud of, failures you learned from, hopes for the future, favorite plants, or funny stories from your garden.

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