HAMPTON COURT PALACE FLOWER SHOW 2010



PART 2 - CONCEPTUAL GARDENS, KIDS COMPETITION ENTRIES AND OTHER DESIRABLE GOODIES...

At long last, I have got around to writing Part 2 of my trip to Hampton Court Flower Show, wherein I look at all the small conceptual gardens - which in some cases were very tiny indeed - and two competitions which were open to childrens' groups - cub scouts, girl-guides, primary school classes etc - some of which were amazingly imaginative and inventive !! I will also share with you some of the beautiful things on sale at this event...if you had the money to spare, and the space available to use them in your own garden...


OTHER SMALL GARDENS - CONCEPTUAL THEMES:-

These small gardens were really more of an artistic expression of a notion or an idea - a work of art using plants, trees, flowers and landscaping materials to express the ideas of the artist...some were amazingly simple and very direct, some were ambiguous and made you think, and some were downright pretentious...

I liked some of them very much though, and looked at them as works of sculptural art rather than conventional garden designs - all were very small but perfectly formed...

"FORCE OF NATURE" - designed by Guy Petheram
(Silver-gilt medal winner)

A small triangular plot and a simple planting scheme of birch trees, lush groundcover plants and a woven willow figure were used to evoke an ambiguous relationship of both exploitation and co-operation. In other words, we seem to be so bent on destroying Nature, but at the same time we depend on the natural environment and are very capable of nurturing and protecting it...

     

So the question is:
Is this willow figure pushing against the force of Nature, or supporting it and holding it up ?...

I liked this for its sheer simplicity, both of the design and the actual idea it tries to convey...I love that willow man and the colour scheme of green and white is so beautifully elegant and simple !!
 
"SUPERMODEL" - designed by Alan Gardner
(Silver medal winner)

'Supermodel' embodies concepts of thinness. Trapped within a tall, thin cage of vertical rods reminiscent of a catwalk, this garden represents the really quite bizarre idea that thin is the only definition of beauty. As we know, this notion has prevailed in the fashion industry and the fashion press for quite a few decades now, and when you stop to really think about it, it IS such a strange concept...and I reckon that this garden represents it pretty well - where are all the big, bushy plants with wide huge showy flowers ? They are noticeably absent !!

Tall, thin plants and trees dominate the design, alongside tall and wiry flowers. The garden is peppered with vertical pink drainpipes (reflecting the saying “as thin as a drainpipe”) and there is no room at all for anything that is wider than that...I reckon this brings home the daftness of the idea pretty well...






"THE PANSY PROJECT" - designed by Paul and Tom Harfleet
(Gold medal winner)

This garden reflects the work of The Pansy Project, an ongoing conceptual artwork initiated by artist Paul Harfleet five years ago to memorialise homophobic hate crime.
The garden represents a first collaboration between Paul and his garden designer brother Tom, who have worked together to design a confrontational shattered structure created from slabs of concrete placed at extreme gradients and underplanted with 4,000 pansies. The sculpture is a metaphoric reflection on the disruptive nature of homophobic hate crime on contemporary society, and The Pansy Project’s resistance to it.

There is a website where the pansy plantings are photographed and the circumstances recorded for posterity ...here's what it says about this project:-

"Artist Paul Harfleet plants pansies at the site of homophobic abuse, he finds the nearest source of soil to where the incident occurred and generally without civic permission plants one unmarked pansy. The flower is then photographed in it's location and posted on his website, the image is entitled after the abuse. Titles like "Let's kill the Bati-Man!" and "Fucking Faggot!" reveal a frequent reality of gay experience which often goes unreported to authorities. This simple action operates as a gesture of quiet resistance, some pansies flourish and others wilt in urban hedgerows. The artist began by planting pansies to mark his own experience of homophobia on the streets of Manchester UK though now he plants pansies for others both on an individual basis and as part of various festivals and events."

Website here :-

www.thepansyproject.com



After apologising for the slight blurred image, I have to tell you that I was really taken with this and what it represents...the whole concept of the hard broken concrete slabs being softened down with all the beautiful pansies planted en masse around the edge, and, indeed, the significant choice of pansies to represent the gay person suffering appalling humiliation at the hands of homophobic thugs...

The pansies were fantastically gorgeous and the photo at the beginning of this post, cropped from the image below, is now the wallpaper on my screen at home...



OTHER SMALL GARDENS - SUSTAINABLE GARDENS:-

There were other small gardens too, elsewhere at Hampton Court, and these here were basically also conceptual gardens, but designed to represent the ecological themes of sustainability, recycling and climate change...

"TOGETHER AGAIN" - designed by Victoria Pustygina and Ludovica Ginanneschi
(Gold medal winner)

This contemporary garden combines strength and lightness, creating an environmentally sustainable and elegant space for entertaining and relaxation. The centrepiece of the garden is a modern structure that has been made using a new sustainable technology called D-shape, a recycled artificial stone that is indistinguishable from real stone and 100% environmentally friendly. High, soft clumps of grasses and perennials surround and complement the structure.



The garden celebrates the reunion of millions of grains of rock sand, which started out as natural stone and have been brought together again through the recycling process to form the structure.



These sculptural forms and the way they fitted together reminded me of the beautiful shapes and organic formation of giant animal skeletons lying in the desert perhaps, and being bleached by the hot sun...



I predict that this new material may become a popular and economical way of getting sculpture into your own back garden !!

"THE END IS WHERE WE START FROM" - designed by Anita Smith
(Silver medal winner)

This garden has been inspired by a line of poetry by T S Elliot. An oak tree stands in pasture, with a series of carved oak sculptures by artist Ruth Wheeler beneath it. Firstly, there is the original acorn lying where it has fallen and next to that, there is a symbolic stream of wild flowers and an area of mulch where oak seedlings are growing. Then there is a half grown oak-tree next to this, and adjacent to that, and completing the circle, is a fallen branch carved with the T S Elliot quote lying in the mulch area next to the acorn....

This sustainable garden is planted with native British plants and has been designed to attract a diverse range of wildlife and insects.







I loved the oak-wood sculptures created by Ruth Wheeler, being particularly taken with the over-sized acorn lying in the grass...

"DECLINATURE" designed by Prue Kahn
(Silver medal winner)

This garden represents the way in which we are in danger of neglecting our duty as custodians of this planet, by allowing human activity to destroy the natural habitats of plants and wildlife through deforestation, urban development and the pollution of land and sea. The sustainability of human existence as we know it is dependent upon the recognition that we are part of nature and need to nurture it.

The decline of nature is illustrated by three plinths. The first portrays the healthy world with scented, colourful and medicinal planting. The other plinths demonstrate how the Earth is progressively suffering due to industrialisation, deforestation, and rampant pollution.





This is where we stopped to have our lovely picnic lunch, and I was quite transfixed by this as I was munching my way through my two ham, tomato and mayo poppy-seed rolls, fruit salad and wine on the side...and the thought did occur to me that my lunch wouldn't be nearly so satisfyingly filling if the planet looked anything like the third trough ...

Mission accomplished, I would say !!

UNKNOWN GARDEN

I have absolutely no idea who designed this garden or what it represents, but I do like it...

I like the willow figure doing a spot of gardening - this is the second garden which features this kind of willow sculpture - and I also liked the seated archway made of bamboo plants at the end of the path, providing shelter from the sun !!

 

The giant dragonflies are also ultra-cool ...

THE SHAKESPEAREAN SCARECROW COMPETITION

I did like the fact that Hampton Court Palace Flower Show had a major element of children's involvement throughout, and a big aspect of this were the two design competitions they held for Primary School classes and Boy Scout/Girl Guide groups to enter...the first one was the Scarecrow Design competition which was to design a scarecrow based on any one of the characters in "A Midsummer Night's Dream"...



Excellent entries to this, all involving various bits and bobs from around the house - all kinds of throw away items that would otherwise be destined for the local charity shop, recycling plant, or landfill site...

 

Of course, Bottom featured heavily with his donkey's head...





In my expert opinion, these next two entries were the best and most imaginative designs...Bottom here looks very real with his papier-maché head and ultra-smart leather jerkin and frilly white shirt...



This is my favourite Titania, with her dress and wings made out of tin-foil pie dishes, DVDs and CDs, which would all make the most tinkly metallic sound in the wind, and which contributed largely to her very ethereal and shiny look ...she also looks like she's wearing the closest to real Elizabethan dress - marvellous stuff !!





Of the slightly simpler entries, it's truly amazing what you can achieve with a couple of old broom handles and a bit of old chiffon !!

RECYCLED CONTAINER GARDENING COMPETITION

The other competition was aimed at the Scout and Guide groups in the area, and this competition was to create imaginative ways to use recycled containers for planting herbs and annuals for a colourful floral display...

 

Of course, old pots and cooking pans were heavily used, and indeed, the odd kettle...

 

I liked the old Hobby-horse toddler truck all planted up with red geraniums and purple clematis...

 

Even old shoes and trainers were pressed into service, and an old lawn-mower...

  

I did wonder whether the local supermarket appreciated one of their old trolleys being used in this way...

 

I really liked the folding laundry rack being bedecked with all these flowers, but it has to be said that my all-time favourite was this amazingly original use for an old false leg...and I like the pair of crutches - a nice touch !!



These were the two main competitions for the kids, and I thought that they were both enthusiastically entered into with tremendous imagination and flair...

LOVELY  AND DESIRABLE THINGS ON SALE...

Of course, just like at Chelsea, there were an amazing number of stalls all peddling their wares, and so these were all the things that I would be interested in buying if money was no object and my garden was sufficiently spacious...

CAMTEX STONE PRODUCTS

This company deals with all things made of stone, of all types - I particularly liked the huge stone drinking-troughs no longer needed by local town-centres for the horses to drink from, and the mill-wheels, which are taken from now-defunct mills around the country - it's really good to see these things being recycled as extremely covetable garden ornaments and plant containers... 



I really loved this huge pot with decorative markings in the stone, but realise that I would need over £1000 to buy it...



Here is their website if you're feeling flush and desire a mill-stone around your garden:-

www.camtexstoneproducts.co.uk/

When I had finished looking at all the lovely stone stuff, I turned around and saw this amazing water feature...

 

Beautiful slate pieces arranged using the old dry-stone walling technique to form this huge pot-shaped water fountain...see the water trickling out of the top and keeping the slate sides all wet, thus showing off the real beauty of the colours in the stone !!



REDWOOD STONE

When it came to stone products though, the first prize in Wendy's book was totally stolen by this company - it's fair to say that I was absolutely in awe of this...and it takes a lot to stop me in my tracks !!



Have you ever fantasized, even just for a split second, about what it would be like to have a real medieval ruin in your back garden ?
Yes, I thought so...me too !!
Then this is the company for you...they will, at a price, create a custom-designed Gothic ruin, complete with ivy and creeper clambering all over it, broken arched windows and maybe even a font, if you so desire...

 

I am not joking when I say that this really did look as if it had been there for five hundred years, and not just over a week...the stone and brickwork was real, all recycled from reclamation companies, and although all the stone carvings and the window arches were all brand new, they were nicely weathered to look very old indeed...



This is, of course, total genius !!
I am SO impressed...here's their website if, again, you are feeling flush and fancy a bit of a church down the end of the garden...you can buy just a broken arch if you so desire !!

www.redwoodstone.com


OTHER BRILLIANT THINGS ON SALE...

Aside from the lure of all the amazing stone products on sale at Hampton Court, there were various other quirky bits and pieces, like these metal spiders, ants and other creepy-crawlies...aren't they amazing ?!! They were so cheap too, just £3 each or a selection for a tenner...

 

I also fell in love with these beautiful ornate Indonesian garden parasols...with their bright hot colours and fancy tassels all around the edge, I was sorely tempted...aren't they fab ?!! The stall also sold things like Chinese bamboo bird-cages, coconut candles, Buddha carvings, and oranges - lots of oranges !!



This took the biscuit for the most imaginative design for a garden table though - a conventional wooden table with an extra dimension - a square water trough in the centre, which could be used for ornamental fish and a water lily perhaps, and maybe a small water-fountain and a champagne bucket to keep the bubbly cool...



This was so fantastically original that I just had to take a close-up of the fish...



Simply marvellous !! Pass the bubbly...



Here's one furniture company that found a really unusual way to advertise the fact that they were having a 50% off sale that week...by displaying their biggest and best 12-seater, complete with place-settings all laid up, in a totally vertical position...



As promised, here's a photograph of me taken by Paula, in my lovely pale straw hat, on the left...accompanied by Aldona, also wearing a new hat, in the middle and Monica on the right...



We look quite red in the face as it was pretty hot that afternoon...and the hats had only just been purchased and donned !! Here's a good pic of said hat and you can see the pretty plaited weave, and the fact that it could be customised in a  number of ways...



Hampton Court Palace Flower Show is actually bigger in physical area than Chelsea, but not nearly so pressurised in terms of press coverage and competitiveness - therefore it is much more relaxed and less crowded...the people are extremely friendly and the whole event doesn't feel quite so - well, posh really, for want of a better word...it's much more Middle England, and not quite so Aristocratic - no Royals here...
When you see the Marquee post, coming up in Part 3, you will see exactly what I mean...