Nicky Roeber is the Online Horticultural Expert at Wyevale Garden Centres. Here, he highlights five of the most standout trends that we saw at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show.
The Chelsea Flower Show is one of the biggest dates in the calendar for keen gardeners in the UK, and with good reason. Every year, it offers a great deal of inspiration when it comes to new colours schemes, landscaping techniques, and interesting plants that we could be incorporating into our own outdoor spaces.
While each garden that’s presented at the Chelsea Flower Show is always unique, you will often find that certain trends crop up in quite a few of them. So, here, I’m going to share some of the key trends I spotted at this year’s event and give you some ideas of how you could replicate them in your garden.
Keep your flowers small
Many of this year’s gardeners decided to pepper their creations with tiny blooms. While we’ve seen bigger flowers take centre stage at past events, for 2019, you should let your greenery do the talking. Then, you can add the tiniest injections of colour with dainty blossoms.
Cow parsley, in particular, was a staple of a lot of the 2019 gardens. And it’s no wonder why: the plant’s frothy flowers are perfect for giving a garden an ethereal feel. Gardener Helen Elks-Smith used these tiny blooms to brighten her hedgerows, while Andrew Duff interspersed his cow parsley with little buttercups.
However, cow parsley can be a tricky one, as it can spread quickly and even overwhelm smaller outdoor spaces. So, if this is something you’re worried about, try creating a similar effect with Orlaya grandiflora or Ammi majus, which are both better behaved.
Add plants to every surface
For the Chelsea Flower Show 2019, no surface was left unturned, as gardeners made sure to cover everything from their sheds’ roofs to their fences in greenery.
This is a trend that we can all incorporate into our own gardens quite easily. For example, you could transform your fences or trellis panels by covering them with climbing plants like ivy or clematis. Or, you can attach plant pots to these structures, and fill them with a mixture of small evergreen and herbaceous perennials.
Go all out with green
Naturally, we saw plenty of greenery at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, but we also saw the likes of fences, pillars, and tiles that were painted in a nature-inspired hue, so they’d blend in.
Again, this is a trend that you can adopt quite easily. For example, you could paint your fences green, or even stain your garden’s decking to match the lawn. It’s all about embracing the colour green, so you’ll also want to plant plenty of shrubs and grasses but go light on the flowers.
So, there you have it: three of the biggest trends we saw at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, and how you can incorporate them into your own outdoor space. I hope these ideas have left you inspired and ready to get your gardening tools out for the summer months!
