Chelsea Flower Show 2019: Inspiration for everyone

Chelsea Flower Show is the highlight of the gardening calendar, offering inspiration for anyone with green fingers. Over 150,000 visitors each year flock to the South London home of the gardening equivalent of Glastonbury. This year, as always, we joined the crowds.

You may have heard about Gold Medal winner, Mark Gregory, and his remarkable homage to the industrial heritage and waterways of West Yorkshire, where canals were once the motorways of their time.

Gold Medal Winning “Welcome to Yorkshire” garden

Mark’s “Welcome to Yorkshire Garden”, a recreation of a lock with lock keeper’s cottage, had to be seen to be believed. The attention to detail was incredible, with genuine lock gates, wild flowers and very naturalistic planting, even including weeds!

Canals were once the motorways of England.

Mark had constructed his garden using authentic Yorkshire stonework and slate, and, of course, a highly realistic stretch of canal. The message was clearly that we should be doing our utmost to protect and preserve for future generations the canal system and the flora and fauna it attracts. 

The attention to detail in “Welcome to Yorkshire” garden was incredible

Another real crowd-puller was the Back to Nature Garden, a playful garden for children, co-designed by the Duchess of Cambridge, Andree Davies and Adam White, complete with tree house, water features and rope swing. The garden reflected one of the key themes of this year’s show to get the young off their screens and out into the wild. 

The Duchess of Cambridge’s “Back to Nature” garden.

There was a big emphasis this year on the environment and mental health - and how gardening plays a fundamental role in turning back the tide of climate change, as a form of healing. 

The healing effect of gardening was a big theme this year.

These are values we hold dear at Garden Affairs. We delight in providing our customers with low-carbon, sustainable buildings where they can enjoy the uplifting, feel-good benefits of their garden, and find some time and space for peaceful reflection.

This year’s show featured naturalistic-style gardens

Other show highlights for us were the naturalistic style of many of the gardens, with grasses, wild flowers, and even weeds in abundance. The overall show winner was Andy Sturgeon’s woodland garden, which used a lot of stone, burnt oak features and shade-loving plants. 

Overall winner Andy Sturgeon’s Woodland Garden

We also spent a lot of time wandering through the floral tent where growing-your-own featured heavily, with an emphasis on the environmental benefits of allotment gardens and minimising waste using recycled materials. 

Grow-your-own made to look easy - Many of this year’s displays were quite literally edible

Reuse, recycling and the environment were the order of the day in many gardens.

We came away from Chelsea supercharged with ideas and inspiration. Chelsea 2019 was an amazing display of hard work and creativity – two character traits we employ day-to-day at Garden Affairs to bring the very best in garden buildings to our customers.  Head over to the Garden Affairs Pinterest page for more of our Chelsea favourites.