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 
It is a wonderful garden Susan 🙂
My favourite of the year, yet at one time I’d have turned my nose up at the red hot pokers. They’re one of the few flowers I just didn’t get. Travel has broadened my mind!
Red Hot Pokers do make a good border or red splashes through a garden. I was ambivalent about Fire Sticks as well but seeing a big one changed my mind too 🙂
Have a fab Christmas Susan 🎅🍾
Cramscaping? Otherwise known as a glorious garden in the best of English traditions! And definitely better for you than several hours of tech.
A bit of a tease, though, not being able to get in amongst it.
This garden is a real paradise, my compliments for the gardeners.
I read that some of the plants didn’t flower in time, but I don’t know where they’d have squeezed them in, if they’d had any more.
I love the word “indulgent.” How exactly right that is, and no doubt it partially explains how satisfying is this cram. It is all the more wonderful because here at the moment we are colorless and drab, grey above and brown below, and all this color is shocking. A very welcome shock it is, too! The header is glorious. So happy that you overcame the blogging blahs, at least for now.
Flower shows ought to be indulgent, at least when it comes to there being plenty of flowers to admire. I seem to have rebelled against the winter solstice, and the sun setting before 4 o’clock. Not on purpose, need I say? Winter is fine by me, especially in a warming world.
I hadn’t heard of cramscaping, but it is a good word! In my yard, I’d have to say that the dandelions at the edge of the woods are cramscaped!
Beautiful photos. A welcome sight as winter settles in around my environs.