I don’t usually use featured headers, but I wanted to share some of the feeling of being immersed in flowers you could enjoy, even from the edge of this cramscape. If you’re using WordPress’s Reader and don’t know what I’m on about, click here.
If there’s a better way to celebrate your 90th year than creating a bold, flower-filled garden, I’d like to hear of it.
Of course, it helps if the nonagenarian is a horticultural business with all the connections and resources that brings.
The Chained to Tech Garden was J. Parker’s first exhibition at Tatton Park for twenty years. It was as if the hopes of all those years had burst out in bloom.
Recent Young Designer Award winner Rachel Platt must have thought all her dreams had come true when she realised what material she had to work with.
Her maximalist design is a the perfect example of cramscaping – planting so intensively that there is no glimpse of bare soil. It was powerful, joyous and indulgent. As so often, the company had arranged for the ingredients to be re-used in ‘real’ gardens locally after the show.
Punchy purples, blues, oranges and yellows were woven together, creating a magical effect, even without backlighting. For those of you interested in the flower palette, I’ve listed some of the highlights at the foot of this post.
I had promised to share pictures of this garden when I posted about the RHS Tatton Park Flower Show Trends. So my sincere thanks to the Lens-Artists for setting an open topic for their final challenge (Last Chance) which has somehow lured me out of my end-of-year blogging blahs.
The Chained to Tech garden aimed to raise awareness of the dangers our reliance on tech of all kinds creates for our physical and mental health – the blurring of ‘life’ and ‘life online’. Ironic, then, that the garden is having the opposite effect of that intended on me, after nearly a month’s break from blogging! But then, WordPress hardly counts as tech, does it?
There was more than a hint that we gardeners shouldn’t crave instant gratification or euphoria via a fast-food-style, flower-filled, fantasy of a garden, although of course that’s exactly what many flower show visitors want. I wonder if there is any help on offer for gardeners (or photographers) who are addicted to flowers? Or is this part of a Machiavellian plan?
Flowers pictured include:
Achillea ‘Terracotta’
Agapanthus
Agastache ‘Black Adder’
Allium ‘Millenium’
Artemisia ‘Powis Castle’
Catananche caerulea ‘Major’
Collarette Dahlia
Coreopsis ‘Mercury Rising’
Eremurus
Eryngium zabelii ‘Blaukappe’
Hemerocallis ‘Frans Hal’
Heuchera ‘Obsidian’
Kniphofia ‘Alcazar’
Nepeta x faassenii
Salvia yangii
Scabiosa ochroleuca
Stachys byzantina
Trachelospermum jasminoides (on the arbor)
Susan Rushton 
Oooh, if only I had the time, space, and money. My little garden comes very close to cramscaping and I didn’t even know it until now. 🙂
Of course, they spread themselves, if we have chosen happy plants.
The word Cramscaping to me conjures up a vision of some sort of activity done on the scree slopes of a mountain 🙂 I love the garden though and your header photo is beautiful.
Something that ought to be done with crampons – if humans were insects perhaps, and flowers were huge? Luckily pollinators have other means of ascending.
LOL, I laughed at your closing comment Susan – it that was the plan it’s working perfectly. Also laughed at your comment about moving us away from spending time on-line which moved you to post this one 😊. I’d never heard of cramscaping but OMG what an incredible accomplishment this garden is. I love that it will be shared afterwards. So glad we nudged you out of the blogging blahs. Happy holidays to you and yours and thanks for joining us!
My pleasure, Tina. Seasons greetings to you and yours!
I do wonder how many of us would still be blogging, were it not for the benefits blogging challenges bring – a sense of community, the prompt to action, a deadline, the wildcard effect etc. So thank you again.
Hooray for cramscaping! I can only imagine the frenzy with pollinators. Wonderful photos and story.
Thanks! It was a pollinator party, for sure.
The only way that I ever plant…
Good on you, Grace.
I let mine plant themselves, and this is what they come up with too!
So you’d say it’s the way plants would plant, if they were gardeners (which I dare say they are, if we humans didn’t corner such definitions for ourselves)?
They’ve been at the game for longer than humans have been around, so they and the chipmunks and deer dictate what grows where in my yard!
Wonderful. Perhaps we are cramscaping without knowing it 🙂
I think you are. It’s all rolled up in the traditional cottage garden style where plants provide their own forms of weed-suppression.
It’s a beautiful garden with a brilliant choice of colour, esp. topped with contrasting Kniphofia. That very dark agapanthus is stunning!
The dark purple is influential in the colour palette too. It wasn’t on the official plant list, but my guess would be the RHS Plant of the Year 2023 – Agapanthus ‘Black Jack’.
It’s is definitely a winner!
Now I have a word for how I garden.
A fine word, too. My word of the year, or rather, my second place word, the first being ‘solastalgia’.
I think I must be a cramscaper too, though I have been trying hard to give plants more space. I am glad you got out of your blogging blahs to post this gem of a garden. Thank you!
I was quite taken aback afterwards to realise my favourite garden had been all about over-stimulating the senses. To my senses it had seemed just about right!
Doesn’t it just gladden the heart? Sumptuous colours! Maybe there will be some packets of seeds in your Christmas stocking, Susan? Have a lovely celebration and very best wishes for 2024.
It does. Thanks, Jo – and the same to you and yours. Now I’m wondering if I have ever been given seeds. I must have been, you’d think. I gave Mother some broccoli seeds during the pandemic, thinking she could… well, what was I thinking? Sadly it turned out she doesn’t like broccoli. I am sure she fed it to us!
I don’t remember broccoli when I was a youngster, but I was thinking sweetpeas 😁🌸
I should have been thinking sweetness too
This is gorgeous-just what I needed to feed my soul. Sending you wishes for joyous and peaceful holidays, Susan. Hope you and your sweetie can be together.
Thanks for thinking of us, Pat. We are together in England. I’m happy this touched your soul. Wishing you and Jim comfort and good cheer over the holiday season.