Chelsea Flower Show 2011
Garden Designs
This garden, my fourth for Chelsea, was inspired by Falling Water, an iconic building in Pennsylvania by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, one of my design heroes. The house, which features huge layers of concrete slabs, sits on a steep hillside and has water running beneath it.
Even though it was a show garden, I designed it with a couple in mind. They were city lovers who had fallen in love with Frank Lloyd Wright’s design and wanted a bit of Falling Water outside their back door. This garden was quite a departure from the more traditional designs that I’d done previously and was interesting playing with a modern look within the framework of a semi-woodland setting.
I used a minimal number of materials, basically just concrete and steel and selected plants for their texture, form, foliage. I included trees to create dappled shade, strong architectural shapes to add drama and various other things that would sit comfortably around water.
I imagined it as part of a larger garden with focal points and pause points to guide you around the garden. Large concrete steppingstones allowed you to cross over the water to the seating at the end of the garden which was backed by a tightly clipped hornbeam hedge. Light reflected from the water bounced around on the polished concrete and big buxus forms echoed the shapes of the hard landscaping. A simple water feature, also made of concrete, goes to show how if you polish and run water down it, a material can look completely different.
I designed wooden seating in the form of little triangular blocks that could be pulled part or slotted together to make interesting shapes.
It was awarded a Gold medal.
