Shot! The Oregon Garden at the 2024 RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival
My favourite of this year’s show gardens splendidly captured the natural beauty of the Beaver State landscape, but inexplicably failed to capture the hearts of the judges
In the dozen or so years since I’ve been coming to Hampton Court and Chelsea, one of the biggest trends in show gardens has been the shift to more naturalistic planting and a penchant for recreating scaled down versions of the landscapes of other countries. Indeed, we’ve seen a veritable panoply of nations. What’s unique however is for the same country to keep returning, with a variation on the same theme at the hands of the same designer.
The country is the USA and the designer is Sadie May Stowell and 2024 marked the fourth or even fifth time she has created show gardens at Hampton Court for Visit The USA, and each time she has designed a garden for Charleston, South Carolina and adjacent to it, another one for the state of Oregon.
Although I’ve never cared for her formal Charleston gardens, I have been drawn to her Oregon ones. Indeed, in 2017 I reviewed her Oregon Garden.
Just why Visit The USA focus only on these two locations, rather than choosing different places each time, I don’t know, but I assume it’s because both locations must see the benefits and contribute a hefty wad of dollars.
Of course, when it comes to comparing and contrasting, having the same designer dealing with the same subject matter makes it even more interesting. The twee Charleston gardens always look quite similar to me, and whilst the same could be said for the Oregon gardens, the natural landscape does provide more varied inspiration to draw from.
Oregon is one of those states that I think many non-Americans know very little about. When one thinks of the west coast it’s almost inevitably California that is front of mind. Beyond that, you might name Seattle, but Oregon barely gets a look in.
That’s despite its size. Indeed, it’s the ninth largest state in the union, covering a whopping 98,381 square miles. Even so, many would struggle to name anywhere in Oregon, even its biggest city Portland. With a population of just over 650,000, it’s the 26th biggest city in the USA. Around half the state’s population reside within the Portland metro area. And how many would be able to name the state capitol? It’s Salem, if you didn’t know.
Oregon is also one of the most geographically diverse states, ranging from rain forests in the Coast Range to barren desert to the South, so it’s no surprise that tourism is the primary driver of the state’s economy. Some 25 million visits are taken every year and last year, visitor spending reached an all-time high of $14 billion.
Most of those visitors come from elsewhere in the US, whilst Oregonians accounted for over a third of visitor spending in 2023. In the same year, international visitors accounted for around 4% of travel spending in the state, down from 10% in 2019.
And the principal reason why so many people come is the landscape. As Travel Oregon CEO Todd Davidson said in June 2024:
“Folks are drawn here because of our incredible natural beauty. They all may define that differently. For some that may be coming here to go mountain biking on the southern Oregon coast and for others it’s exploring the wine country just outside of Portland.”
And of course recreating the state’s natural beauty is what the Oregon Garden is all about, referring to it as a garden is somewhat misleading, as it is more accurately a scaled down representation.
If I’m not mistaken, the first one was back in 2015.
In 2017, Visit the USA sponsored three adjacent gardens for Charleston, Florida and Oregon. All were the creation of the same designer, Sadie May Stowell, but of the three I was only attracted to her Oregon garden, which the judges awarded a silver-gilt.
In my review, I wrote that trying to encapsulate such a large and diverse landscape within a 7m x 7m square plot was always going to be a challenge.
“Attempting to bring a little of the Oregon landscape to England proved a big ask.”
And it was:
“The problem was the Lilliputian-sized space she had to work in was so small, there was no sense of scale, no sense of drama.”
As a result, rather than looking natural, it just looked artificial:
“With so little space, much of the planting felt like every last available inch was having to be stuffed with plants. As much as I liked her selection, I felt the garden was overplanted.”
Neither did I care for the pool:
“Rather than the blue of the rendering, the actual water on the garden was so dark it didn’t even look like water.”
I concluded by saying:
“It could have been so different if Visit the USA had used their space to focus on just one state with just one garden. Triple the size and I could see the Oregon Garden having the scope to create something that would truly have represented Oregon and sold the State so much better.”
Sadie May was back in 2023 with yet another Oregon garden, but as before I felt she tried to attempt too much in too small a space.
So when I learnt she would be returning once again in 2024, I anticipated more of the same. In some ways I was right, it was another take on a rocky Oregon landscape complete with boulders, waterfall and pond, but this time it was so much better.
Perhaps most significantly, it was a noticeably bigger plot.
The biggest beneficiary of that was the pond, much larger and much more natural looking, it was the dominant feature and this time it really did look like a proper pond, even the blue/grey colour of the water felt right.
And when you’re trying to evoke the Oregon landscape, getting the pond looking natural is key. With more than 1,400 named lakes, Oregon is renowned for its abundance of water.
Even the way the boulders and stones were arranged looked like nature intended.
The only thing that was off for me was the welcome sign fixed to one of the borders, which rather spoiled the authenticity.
The planting also looked natural, and as it was not overstuffed, what plants there were really stood out. I particularly liked the subtle colour palette of lilac-blue and white flowers and reddish bronze foliage, set against the verdant backdrop containing different fern varieties and trees such as Common Hazel, Scots Pine and Bird Cherry.
Unfortunately, the plant list for the garden made it difficult to identify the names of all the plants. To be fair, this is often a problem with show gardens, perhaps because final plant choices can only be made in the weeks before the show and are entirely dependent on availability at the time.
Having previously supplied Sadie May with Gabbro boulders and weathered limestone for all her previous Oregon Gardens, I think I can safely assume that CED Stone did the same for this one. And I have to say, the choice of boulders, their colours and their positioning, really created the sense of drama that you need on this type of show garden.
Whilst I was impressed with what I saw, it would seem the judges’ weren’t. At far as I can tell, despite giving Sadie May’s companion Charleston Garden a silver, they didn’t think this one deserved a medal of any colour. I’ve no idea, what they were thinking. All I know is it was way more accomplished than her previous Oregon iterations, all of which won medals, and, to my eyes, it was far superior to The Lion King garden upon which they bestowed both Best in Show and a gold medal!
As the judges never divulge the reasoning behind their decisions, I guess we’ll never know what about it they didn’t like.
Behind the shot: All these images were taken handheld mainly with the iPhone 14 Pro and a few with the Olympus OM-D E-M1. As always, it was all about looking for interesting compositions and waiting until there were no people in the frame. Photographed at Hampton Court Palace on 1 July 2024.
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.
