Gardens Illustrated deputy editor Sorrel Everton heads to Hampton Court Flower Show to look at the ideas and inspiration at the gardens and beyond in 2023

By Sorrel Everton

Published: Wednesday, 05 July 2023 at 12:00 am

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Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival runs all this week until 9 July. It’s one of the RHS’s key shows throughout the year, and follows in the wake of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. We headed to Hampton Court Palace Flower Show this year to take a look at the gardens.

• Here’s everything you need to know about Hampton Court Flower Show.
• Here’s which gardens won medals at Hampton Court Flower Show

Highlights of Hampton Court Flower Show 2023

Worldwide appeal

With thoughts of summer holidays but a moment away, Hampton Court offered plenty of destination inspiration. Korea and Norway both appeared but it was the USA that proved the show-stopping destination with show garden ‘America’s Wild’ winning Gold, Best in Show and Best Show Garden Construction.

Presented by Trailfinders and Visit the USA, design trio Jude Yeo, Emily Grayshaw and Imogen Perreau Callf from Inspired Earth Design created engaging representations in both planting and evocative landscaping ranging from desert, to forest and prairie with plantings showcasing iconic examples in each including agaves, liquidambers and echinaceas.

 

Landscape v garden

While at Chelsea you might hear the ‘but is it a garden’ comment, with many a show garden taking you out into the landscape, but here at Hampton Court Festival, landscapes are brought to the garden – none more so than the plethora of big boulders being used in gardens as a way of using more natural hard landscaping that punctuates planting and provides moments of pause.

Cruise operator Hurtigruten’s The Relation-Ship Garden designed by Max Parker-Smith, former Young Designer award winner, created a serene Norwegian garden overlooking a lake, with stylish shoreside seating and outdoor fire, contrasting with tactile boulders that invited bare foot exploration.

Paul Hervey-Brookes’ Gold-winning Cancer Research UK Legacy Garden was another tranquil space combining woodland-style planting studded with boulders that line a gently running water feature.

 

Finally, while a huge boulder may not be suitable for everyone’s garden palette, Zoe Claymore’s Renters’ Retreat garden for The Wildlife Trusts made clever use of a natural stone ‘paver’. The small courtyard garden had been ‘wilded’ to create a more naturalised appeal and environment. The gravel courtyard was visually and texturally broken up with the carefully place paver, that played to the garden’s natural appeal.

Key message for future-proofing our gardens

Not a judged show garden but Tom Massey’s RHS Resilient Garden, sponsored by domestic drainage and landscaping systems company ACO, set a key message for all gardeners – and indeed developers. So much going on here – rainwater management, a food forest, wildlife habitats, front garden scaping – PLUS some fantastic VR insights revealing before and after views that highlight the transformation and how it can relate to anyone’s garden. Incorporating soak aways, underground rainwater tanks, and draining systems doesn’t sound that exciting when it comes to planning your dream garden, but make solid sense in the face of climate change – and if done well, go unseen.

Horti-icon

This year the RHS gave their Iconic Horticultural Hero honour to plantswoman, ex nursery owner and familiar Gardeners’ World presenter Carol Klein. Her feature garden at the show was a beautifully blended, pastel colour palette of planting covering six different habitats, all familiar to possible garden situations – wetland, woodland, hedgerow, meadow, alpine (more boulders) and seaside. There was a huge plant list here with something for everyone. The garden included a table and chairs nestled amid fulsome planting – a lovely spot to sit but Carol’s energy and enthusiasm for every single plant included here wouldn’t, I fear, have left much time for sitting.

Not so shabby but still chic

For those fearful of the shabbiness that a wildlife friendly garden might entail can be reassured by Jo Thompson and Kate Bradbury’s RHS Wildlife Garden – an uplifting space filled with carefully chosen plants to benefit wildlife and people. Envisioned as a reframing of a disused urban space, the garden blended discarded elements as containers and plant support and wildlife hedges along with a nestled bench for quiet contemplation. Hawthorn nestled with Achillea millefolium, verbenas, Digitalis lanata, Daucus carota and even a lovingly planted dahlia given pride of place in an old rusty wheel arch. Standout was the Rosa ‘Night Owl’ clambering over rustic found wood tripods – and the blackcurrant for sharing with wildlife.

New fragrant rose

Look out for this eye- and nose-catching newly launched rose from David Austin – Rosa ‘Penelope Lively (=Ausb18a15) with tightly frilled, medium-sized blooms and wonderfully fragranced. Twelve years in the breeding, and named after author Penelope Lively as part of David Austin’s English rose literary collection.

Welcome to the jungle

Amid the excellence of displays in the floral marquee, the jungle display from Newbury Farm Plants really stood out for its vibrancy of leaf shape, pattern and texture. As we become more familiar with the idea of lush exotics, these plants will no doubt find their way into our regular planting palette. And what the stand emphasised was that, contrary to many of the plants grown in a tropical garden here in the UK, their evocation of a jungle garden was filled with a mix of shade- and sun-loving plants that are hardy and don’t need to be brought indoors overwinter (although some winter protection would be advised). The large-leaved boehmerias stood out as did the intriguing, palmate leaves of the Manihot grahamii, native to South America.

The display was a representation of the jungle garden being planted in the dry moat at Walmer Castle in Kent. One to watch.

I don’t have a gravel garden

You could be forgiven for thinking that we now all need to cover our gardens in rubble and gravel and that our planting problems will be solved. It isn’t as simple as this, but it is a useful reminder that as far as possible our hard surfaces should be permeable to help rainwater soak into our gardens rather than overwhelming our drains. And perhaps that we can soften what we think of as hard landscaping. The Korea LH Garden designed Danbee Kim was a consideration of how we can better share our urban spaces with nature. One idea was to cut paving stones with holes, gravel filled and planted. This would help rainwater drain away, as well as giving more planting opportunities, invite nature closer to our homes and open up the idea of growing in gravel. If cutting existing paving stones is too hard to achieve, try lifting the odd paver to open up such spaces.

Why you want a dead hedge

A dead hedge never sounds that appealing – no matter how good we are told it is for wildlife. RHS Garden Wisley, however, showed just how successful it can be with their dead-hedge spiral. Layered and woven birch brush (from a locally coppiced woodland) was shaped into a spiral to create a quite nook for relaxing and observing. A hedgehog tunnel was incorporated at the bottom along with sections of mixed materials to appeal to nesting insects, and artfully placed and decorated peep holes, completely elevating this workaday structure to something really exciting and achievable for anyone trying to carve out a little bit of space to share more closely with nature.

 

Find full details of this year’s show garden medal winners

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