Posted on by susurrus

On Display: Four Trends From The RHS Tatton Park Flower Show

The Balanced Garden, Tatton Park Flower Show
Soft, romantic planting in The Balanced Garden

Usually, my posts about flower shows focus on the plants, gardens and planting combinations I enjoyed best, or trends I picked out. Today, I’m taking a step back and illustrating the official trends from this year’s Tatton Park Flower Show.

To be honest, I’d not have guessed all four trends that the Royal Horticulture Society highlighted, but I didn’t have to as the RHS helpfully listed them online.

Trend one: Soft planting

Billowing clouds of grasses and soft pink colour palettes gave the show a romantic feel with plants spilling onto paths and tumbling over the edges of containers.

Seeking Resilience Garden: romantic planting of grasses and flowers
Seeking Resilience Garden imagines an inner-city pocket park
Seeking Resilience Garden: billowy Deschampsia with Liatris
Billowy Deschampsia mingles with Cotinus and Liatris
Romantic planting in Bridgemere's Miniature Cottage Garden, RHS Tatton
Bridgemere’s Miniature Cottage Garden served oodles of romance
Rose pink echinacea
Rose pink echinacea

While echinaceas (coneflowers) are commonly pink, it’s less usual to see them in this pastel shade.

Pink trend: Lilium 'Sabor'
Lilium ‘Sabor’

I’ve picked out this powder pink lily to suit the trend from the many scented beauties on display.

Sidalcea and Lobelia
Sidalcea and Lobelia
Penstemon 'Pensham Laura'
Penstemon ‘Pensham Laura’
Pink Delphinium 'Delgenius Chantay'
Delphinium ‘Delgenius Chantay’

Trend two: Dead wood hedges

Great for wildlife and reusing organic material – dead wood hedges are the ultimate in sustainable landscaping… a great take-home idea for larger gardens.

Off The Grid Garden, Tatton Park, dead hedge
Dead hedge, Off The Grid Garden

Trend three: Resilient trees

Garden trees on display multi-tasked, providing extras such as fruit (apple and fig), peeling white bark (birch), or colourful berries (rowan).

The Empowerment Garden
Apple tree in The Empowerment Garden
Romantic planting, The Balanced Garden, Tatton Park Flower Show
Multi-stemmed trees included Prunus serrula and Heptacodium miconioides

Trend four: Corten steel

Strong, durable and with great aesthetic appeal, corten steel features included a portico, garden art, a water feature and an arbour.

Industrial-style metal planters
Industrial-style metal planters

I like the distressed effect you’ll get over time with Corten steel, but neglected to photograph much of it at the show. I doubt this planter is made from Corten steel as it is more roughed up than the steel tends to be, but it took my fancy and is Corten steel-esque.

Corten steel pergola, Chained to Tech Garden
Corten steel pergola, Chained to Tech Garden

The genuine article appeared in my favourite, flower-filled show garden (see this post for more).

Shared for Ann-Christine’s challenge: On Display.

50 Replies to “On Display: Four Trends From The RHS Tatton Park Flower Show”

  5. Lots of interesting ideas. The dead wood hedge would quickly rot where I live. Organics rot so quickly that I can throw pretty big limbs into my wooded area and they are gone soon, nourishing the trees.

    1. It’s good to see naturalistic gardens being celebrated. I smiled to see a sign in a native plants pollinator garden recently saying, ‘Did we really do this on purpose?’

  8. Beautiful, beautiful, Susan! That soft planting really speaks to me – I’d love to walk in all that pink and the grasses. The hedge is popular here too, and corten has been for a long time. Fabulous displays of joy!

  9. “Oodles”! There’s a word I haven’t seen/heard in ages, and I thank you for reminding me of it! What a great word! I am all about the “oodles of romance,” and I would love to achieve the airy look in that top photo. But, oh, how I covet that rose pink echinacea! I’ve never seen that. There are so many photos here that I want to step into and linger a while. What fun to visit all these ideas! Thank you!

    1. It’s nice to be able to share them here. I’m glad you liked the echinacea. It struck me as extraordinary when I saw it, yet I imagine to many, it’s just another pink!

  10. I am smitten by those soft romantic colors. Tried to have a garden with those colors in my backyard but lost so many plants that I eventually gave up, and red and yellow crept in. Pretty enough, but I yearn for those soft colors.

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