Shot! The Nurture Landscapes Garden at the 2023 RHS Chelsea Flower Show
My favourite show garden at this year’s Chelsea paid homage to the artist and plant breeder Sir Cedric Morris and won a gold-medal for its designer, Sarah Price.
This year there were a dozen show gardens at Chelsea. That’s — I think — the most for several years, but for me just one stood out as being something really special.
It was one of just a few that bucked the RHS-driven trend for all-out sustainability, which embraced reclaimed materials and saw everything from rubble, dilapidated buildings and upturned tree trunks appear on once pristine show gardens.
Perhaps most controversial of them all was that weeds were welcome.
Fortunately, for those of us who come to Chelsea to see drop-dead gorgeous, picture perfect gardens, none of those ‘nasties’ featured on Sarah Price’s Nurture Landscape garden, which although embracing many sustainable elements was also by far and away the most beautiful and the most photogenic on Main Avenue.
The first thing that drew you in was the unusual colour palette: the subtle burnt umbers, ochres and terracottas of the walls made from lime-rendered straw bales, together with the pigmented earth, provided a wonderful canvas for Sarah’s painterly planting that featured magnificent maroon aeoniums as well as a stunning selection of irises, arguably the outstanding flower of this year’s Chelsea.
The distinctive colour scheme extended into the hard landscaping, where all the bricks, tables, planters and water bowls were artfully made from recycled waste material.
Unlike the many charity-funded show gardens that invariably struggle to tell their sponsor’s story, Sarah’s garden was informed by something much less disquieting: Benton End, the former home and garden of noted artist and plantsman, Sir Cedric Morris. But it was all done with a subtle hand. The diagonally laid paving, for example, echoed the brickwork pattern on the walls of Benton End house.
Best known for his floral paintings, Cedric also bred bearded irises, naming some 90 varieties, many of which carry the ‘Benton’ prefix after his Suffolk garden.
When he died in 1992, Benton End fell into disrepair and its gardens were dug up. In 2020, the property was gifted to the Garden Museum in the hope that the house and garden could be revived and opened to the public.
That project is expected to take around five years, so this show garden was all about giving people a flavour of what they might see when it reopens. Indeed, after the show, all the plants were relocated to Benton End.
Like any Chelsea show garden, it’s only when you actually get to go on it that you can really experience it as the designer envisaged. Most visitors to Main Avenue only get to look into the show gardens from the front or the side, stood behind a rope barrier.
I was fortunate to spend quite a bit of time on Sarah’s garden, even having the opportunity of a brief chat with her. When you’re up close and personal, you get to feel the atmosphere and appreciate quite what a work of art it is.
Unlike most of the other show gardens which were crammed with foliage, the space between the plants on Sarah’s sublime garden made everything stand out.
The only other garden designer with such an elegant touch is multiple gold medallist Andy Sturgeon, who didn’t have a garden at this year’s Chelsea. And as with Andy’s gardens, it’s the details that make it special.
The use of succulents on a show garden is unusual — indeed, I can’t recall any featuring them so prominently. Some of the huge potted aeoniums that Sarah had sourced were exceptional, as were the feature trees including a magnificent Scots pine pruned to look like a stone pine.
But fittingly, it was the Benton irises that were centre stage, with my favourite being Benton Olive.
As luck would have it, for most of Press Day, the weather was overcast so I didn’t get to see for myself how even more beautiful the garden looks when the sun dapples the walls.
The renowned garden designer Beth Chatto who died in 2018, once described Cedric Morris’s garden as a “mind-stretching, eye-widening canvas of colour, textures and shapes.” Had she lived to see it, I’m sure she would have approved of how Sarah Price’s Chelsea tribute captured that vision.
This was a garden inspired by painting and one that thanks to Sarah’s artistic touch — she trained in fine art — ended up looking like a living painting.
That it won a gold medal was no surprise, that it wasn’t awarded best in show was bewildering. No other garden at Chelsea came even close and judging by the comments I was hearing along Main Avenue, quite a few others also thought it would get the top prize.
Many of the comments I read about it afterwards shared my opinion. One wrote “Not sure I’ve ever had such an emotional response to a garden at Chelsea.” while another commented “Every decade or so a garden stands out and this is the one.”
No less an authority than the BBC’s Monty Don had the same reaction:
“I’ve been coming to Chelsea for a very long time and I’m always looking for something that’s going to stop me in my tracks and redefine everything I thought I knew. This is one of those gardens.”
A few days later on his Instagram he went even further:
“Sarah Price’s garden was a game changer and will remain with me long after all else from the show has faded and blurred into one. It was a joy.”
Indeed, I can’t recall ever seeing so much praise on social media for any Chelsea show garden. The more I think about it, the more I believe the judges got their Best in Show decision* horribly wrong! And so, for that matter, did the public when deciding on the People’s Choice**.
I’ll leave the last word to the Telegraph’s Clare Coulson who summed it up perfectly:
“Precious few gardens stop you in your tracks and take your breath away. Sarah Price’s did just that. It will be surely be one of the show’s most influential gardens of recent history.”
*The judges awarded Horatio’s Garden, designed by Harris Bugg Studio Best in Show.
**This year’s People’s Choice was won by Chris Beardshaw for his Myeloma UK — A Life Worth Living Garden.
The Nurture Landscapes Garden was designed by Sarah Price Landscapes and sponsored by the Nurture Group. All the plants were grown by Crocus who also built the garden.
Behind the shot: All these images were taken with the iPhone 14 Pro. I think this is the first time shooting a Chelsea show garden that I preferred my iPhone images over those taken with the Olympus OM-D E-M1, which says a lot about how far iPhone camera technology has come. For me, it was all about looking for interesting compositions and trying not to take the same pictures as everyone else at the show.
About the author: Based in Sussex-by-the-Sea, on England’s south coast, Gary is a creative writer and image-maker. He specialises in creating out of the ordinary portraits of musicians and people with interesting faces, as well as photographing some of the world’s finest flowers and gardens, not forgetting an array of automotive exotica.
On the writing side, he has used his research skills to author deep dives into some noteworthy songs beginning with Bryan Ferry’s ‘These Foolish Things’ ‘Ghost Town’ by The Specials, ‘Real Wild Child’ by Ivan and ‘All The Young Dudes’ by Mott the Hoople.
He has also written a biography of Robert Palmer and the stories behind Whitesnake’s blatant Led Zep rip-off, ‘Still Of The Night’, Harry Styles’ anthem to positivity, ‘Treat People With Kindness’ and the little known Queen track ‘Cool Cat.’
Most recently, Gary has penned the fascinating story behind George Orwell’s dystopian novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four.’ as well as ‘Believe It Or Not’ a look into the rise of fake news.
All these can be found here on Medium, along with his reviews of gigs and events and chats with musicians including the likes of Royal Blood, Joe Satriani and Wolf Alice.
