Home >
UK property >
Rust tops the class at Chelsea

Rust tops the class at Chelsea

Wednesday, 24 May 2006 12:00 AM

A garden featuring a rusty steel wall has received the prestigious best in show award at the 2006 Chelsea Flower Show.

Tom Stuart-Smith's Daily Telegraph Garden, which also claimed a gold medal, contains a colourful range of planting, set against the backdrop of a pre-rusted corten steel wall.

Top-name designers Chris Beardshaw, the Flying Gardener, and Andy Sturgeon picked up gold medals for their show gardens, along with four others.

But it was the Telegraph garden, which six-time Chelsea exhibitor Mr Stuart-Smith describes as a "study in contrast between simplicity and complexity", that stole the show.

"Tom's creativity excited the judges," said Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) shows organiser Bob Sweet.

"The Daily Telegraph Garden displays a risque choice of plants including Viburnum rhytidifolium, which is an unusual plant to sue in association with pastel herbaceous plants.

"The garden also features one of the more fashionable materials emerging from this year's show, 'corten-steel', which provides a rusty brown appearance to the backdrop of the garden. One of the more unique features of the garden is the water feature with resonating ripples."

Andy Sturgeon picked up a gold medal for the second year running with the Cancer Research UK Garden, which attracted excitement earlier in the week with publicity shots featuring naturist Sheridan Ritchie.

Chris Beardshaw added to his gold medal from the 1999 Chelsea Flower Show with the Chris Beardshaw Wormcast Garden this year, which he describes as a "quintessential English garden with formal symmetrical design softened by billowing herbaceous borders".

Cleve West's Saga Insurance Garden, Dean Herald's Australian Garden, and the Savill's Garden, designed by Marcus Barnett and Philip Nixon, also won gold medals - as did Chelsea first-timer Sarah Eberle for Walking Barefoot with Bradstone.

A Garden for Robin, which is designed to capture the spirit of York Gate Garden in Leeds, was voted best in show in the courtyard garden category.

The tropical forest-like Green Room was the best city garden, while the Japanese-inspired Ao Arashi, meaning blue storm, won the chic garden category.

In the Great Pavilion, 44 RHS gold medals were presented to floral exhibitors, while the coveted president's award went to Bournemouth borough council, whose floral exhibit featured a three-dimensional reproduction of five giant pieces of fruit and vegetables, made from cut flowers.

"It is highly imaginative and has attracted a lot of positive comment from some of the most discerning gardening public," said RHS president Sir Richard Carew Pole.

Click here for a full list of winners