Carol Klein’s Iconic Horticultural Hero Garden

Plant combinations fascinate me, so I loved the way these flowers, foliage and billowing grasses were painting their lines and colours against the textured background of a gravel mulch in the most alluring feature garden at this year’s Hampton Court Flower Show.

The effect previewed the romantic, soft planting trend that would be taken further at the Tatton Park Show a few weeks later.

The plants pictured here include:
Allium sphaerocephalon (drumstick allium; purple)
Galactities tomentosa alba (milk thistle; creamy-white)
Verbena officinalis var grandiflora ‘Bampton’ (vervain Bampton; lavender-pink)
Erigeron ‘Dimity’ (fleabane; pink)
Nepeta racemosa ‘Walker’s Low’ (catmint; lavender-blue)
Santolina chamaecyparissus (cotton lavender; yellow)
Stipa tenuissima (Mexican feather grass)

Unlike the Lifetime Achievement award at the Oscars, where the winner merely gets a statuette, when a person is named Iconic Horticultural Hero by the Royal Horticulture Society, they get to design a garden at one of the country’s most prestigious flower shows, the RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival.

It was no mean garden, either. Carol Klein’s Iconic Horticultural Hero Garden encompassed an array of habitats, including hedgerow, meadow, moor and mountain, seaside, a vegetable patch, wetland and woodland.

During the show, a lengthy queue of visitors snaked outside and eventually through the garden. This is Britain, after all.

While Carol Klein is reported to be slightly embarrassed to have been named RHS Iconic Horticultural Hero 2023 (the title has the unwieldiness that characterises many RHS titles, setting aside the Hero/Heroine question), her recognition is well-deserved. Carol’s heart is in exactly the right place, and her northern, down-to-earth approach serves her well.

I met her many years ago at the nursery when working at David Austin Roses. Carol and I were following Michael Marriott through a gap in the hedgerow as he was explaining, ‘Here are our trial fields where our most promising seedlings are grown on…’. We were all equally horrified to discover a small flock of sheep peacefully rampaging through the roses, as only sheep can.

So my strongest memory of Carol, one of the nation’s best loved gardening presenters, will always be of her running around, helping us persuade sheep they should return to their own field and leave our potential new varieties alone.

I’m so glad she had the chance to use the RHS’s resources to inspire and enchant us.

The part of the garden I’m highlighting here was the sun-loving, drought-tolerant ‘seaside’ planting that Carol created with the Beth Chatto team.

As our climate warms, the palette of plants that are happy in our conditions will change, whether we like it or not. Anyone looking to get more familiar with choice plants for a warmer climate might like to check out the full seaside planting list at the foot of this post on Beth Chatto’s website which shows how plants were prepared for the ‘seaside’ area of the show garden.

The RHS website has pictures and information about the garden, including a full, if provisional, plant list, or you can follow Carol on Instagram to find our more about her work.