Here are a few highlights from the RHS Flower Show Cardiff 2018, the first outdoor RHS show of the year.
The RHS Cardiff Show is a great way to get your gardening year underway. With winter finally gone, it's a chance to spend a day immersed in gardens and plants, and come away with ideas and inspiration for your own garden. Here are just a few things that caught my eye:
The RHS Flower Show Cardiff 2018
An evocative miniature landscape
The title picture above is the Cwm Caerdydd show garden by Adam and Richard Davis of Evergreen Wales. "Cwm" is Welsh for valley, and "Caerdydd" is Cardiff. The father and son team designed this garden as a naturalistic interpretation of the South Wales landscape.
I liked that it could be viewed from all sides. I think it's important for gardens to make you move around them to be able to see everything they have to offer. Each side offers a different viewpoint and a new perspective.
They've combined a birch wood, a glacial valley with a waterfall, natural stone and wildflowers to bring the essence of wild South Wales to a show garden - a sort of garden capriccio.
It is certainly evocative - as soon as I set eyes on it I was transported back to a family outing to the Sgwd Henrhyd waterfall in the Brecon Beacons, where we walked behind the falling water. This garden also features a cave behind the waterfall which offers a place to sit and relax.
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| "Cwm Caerdydd" show garden by Evergreen Wales |
It's a fine example of how a garden can be inspired by nature, and how it can take you in your mind to somewhere else entirely, by bringing a piece of that place to you.
Upcycling ideas for your garden
There are lots of examples of upcycling at the show this year. Car tyres have been repurposed into seats, steel re-bar into a bridge, jars into terrariums and logs into bug hotels. The Reimagined Past show garden, designed by Pam Creed, featured several such ideas.
It is an outdoor room, surrounded by some beautiful planting, using extremely clever combinations of euphorbia, lamium, hellebore, anemanthele and heuchera, amongst others, to produce a lovely subtle blend of bronze, purple and pink tones, occasionally offset by zesty yellow and greens.
The paving, walls and furniture are made from reclaimed materials, some of them quite surprising. There is an outdoor fireplace, and a porcelain sink mounted on the wall as a planter. But my favourite was the sash window weights that you can see in the foreground as a decorative addition.
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| Reimagined Past show garden by Pam Creed |
Scilla peruviana
If you thought Scilla were little tiny flowers think again. This variety on display at the Harts Nursery stand resembles a protea flower as it's bright blue flowers begin to open. Quite striking.
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| Scilla peruviana |
Arisaema sikokianum
Equally striking, and in my opinion even more unusual, is this. A deep purple spathe holds a pure white spadix on this woodland plant on display on the Millwood Plants exhibit which was judged the best of all those in the floral marquee. Very eye catching, it had plenty of people stopping for a closer look.
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| Arisaema sikokianum |
An alpine display in a pot
Coming as it does fairly early in spring, the Cardiff show is an ideal time for alpine growers to show off their wares. If you have upwards of £500 to spare you can take home something like this from Darcy & Everest. A spectacular handmade alpine dish, probably almost two metres across, and planted with some beautiful spring flowering alpines, amongst the gravel and stone.
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| Large alpine pot display |
It looks fabulous, but if the price is a bit steep, don't worry. You can make a similar display yourself (though a bit smaller!) using a broken pot.
Daphne x hendersonii Ernst Hauser
Daphne is one of the strongest and sweetest fragrances you can have in your garden. I have one outside my front door and love smelling it as I pass by in spring.
So when I spotted an alpine version of a daphne on the Ice Alpines stand, I was very curious as I had never heard of an alpine daphne before. I may have been far more susceptible than I ought to be, but the little notice next to it describing it as infrequently available was enough to reel me in. This one was planted in my rock garden before darkness fell!
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| Daphne hendersonii Ernst Hauser |
There are plenty of flower buds on it so I expect to enjoy the heady scent soon.
This post is part of a link up: Six on Saturday, organised by The Propagator. Visit his site to see what loads of other people have been looking at this week. As a special bonus, I have a seventh item for you - I couldn't resist including this hedgehog from the Wildlife Trust exhibit at the show. Made from garden prunings and promoting gardens as fun for children and homely for wildlife, it deserves a place.
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| Brushwood hedgehog |
That's all I've got room for for now, but the RHS Flower Show Cardiff is open until Sunday if you can get along. If you can't make it, I'll be sharing more ideas and inspiration I found there, so please come back soon to see what else I found.