Tonight:
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Chelsea Flower Show - pick of the crop
13 May 2009The Quilted Velvet garden is avant garde designer Tony Smith's biggest RHS garden to date and features retro bedding plants including cheerful busy lizzies and lavender representing the comfort of the end of the day after a long shift at work, shown by spiky yuccas and cordylines.
Sarah Eberle, Best in Show winner last year, stepped in at the last minute to build a “credit crunch” plot on the site of an Australian garden which was forced to pull out after its plants were destroyed by the Victoria bushfires in February. Ms Eberle has been foraging in scrap yards and borrowing plants so she can build The Overdrawn Artist's Garden, Off-Shore Garden and The Banker's Garden, which is Monopoly-themed and includes garden furniture shaped like a dice and shaker.
Barakura Design's garden by Kay Yamada, fuses English and Japanese styles. It commemorates the 150th anniversary of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce between Japan and Britain. Japanese “Sui-Kin-Kutsu” (water harp caves) create beautiful echoing sounds.
Paul Stone's Eden Project garden was created with prisoners and the homeless. It is a mazy plot echoing life journeys and includes 10,000 plants including herbs and vegetables grown in prison gardens such as HMP Holloway and Wandsworth.
Lindsay Anglin is a newcomer whose budget Dawn Chorus Garden is a celebration of the outside at first light. It is a plant-rich swathe of colour with geraniums, foxgloves, roses and peonies.
Giles Landscapes's garden shows the lifestyle of a Fenland dweller who practices the art of alchemy. This garden has been created using reclaimed, recycled and discarded materials, promoting native plants in domestic landscapes.
RHS Chelsea Flower Show newcomer James Wong, who recently appeared on the BBC2 TV series Grow Your Own Drugs, has designed a plot for the Canary Islands Tourist Board, which features a thermal spa, with garden designer David Cubero.
