Shot! The three standout show gardens at the 2021 RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival.
After a Covid-induced absence, the RHS was finally back with a flower show that focused on sustainable gardens, naturalistic planting and the power of gardening to improve wellbeing.
Just days before it was confirmed that pretty much all Covid restrictions would be lifted on July 19th, the RHS put on its first flower show after all its 2020 shows were victims of the pandemic.
While the more prestigious Chelsea Flower Show has been delayed from the third week in May to the third week in September, Hampton kept its usual July slot, meaning it took place two and a half months ahead of Chelsea, rather than six weeks after it. Those attending on press day had to go through hoops to satisfy Covid health protocols, from being required to prove you wered double jabbed through the NHS app and responding to a health questionaaire the night before the show.
All this seemed well over the top for an outdoor event held across 34 spacious acres of Henry VIII’s palace by the Thames, when the very same week more than 60,000 fans would be in Wembley Stadium for England’s semi-final against Denmark. Clearly, it was a huge burden for the RHS, not just in the days before the show, but with all the uncertainty that had been going on for months previous.
Despite all the pre-show issues, once inside the festival grounds, apart from hand sanitiser stations, and tannoy messages to keep your distance, it was just like any previous show, with few if any wearing masks or socially distancing. The impression one had was the RHS had been put through an array of red tape for no real reason. I’m sure it was a nightmare for them, but I for one was glad they persevered and went through with it.
Ironically, even with the abundance of space, show gardens at Hampton — the world’s biggest flower show — are always much smaller than their Chelsea counterparts. Thinking about it, this is probably due to significantly smaller budgets as Hampton is nowhere near as prestigious as Chelsea.
This year there were no less than 17 show gardens. That sounds a lot, but walking around one had to really seek them out or stumble across them. Many were truly minuscule in size and all were scattered among other exhibitors rather than grouped together by garden category as they once were (and still are at Chelsea).
Personally, I don’t think this works, and I can only believe the RHS’s intention is to create more traffic for the exhibitors, of which there are far more occupying Hampton than Chelsea.
Whatever the rationale, the end result makes the overall event actually appear less impressive. Where once there was a group of show gardens in easily defined areas, now they’re hidden throughout the exhibitors and easy to miss.
Confusingly for the visitor, the show’s two largest gardens were financed by the RHS themselves, which meant they were neither eligible for judging nor being voted in the Peoples’ Choice award. That in itself was a shame as both were far superior to any other gardens on show. Both were also significantly larger.
Perhaps it was no surprise that the biggest garden — Jamie Butterworth’s RHS Garden for a Green Future — was also the most impressive. I may be wrong, but I think it was also the largest garden I’ve ever seen at Hampton in the last ten years.
Scale is everything in garden design — especially when it comes to show gardens. The more space you have, the more you can do with it, and the more of a show you can put on.
For me, it was the stand-out garden. Not only was it the most ambitious in terms of landscaping, but it also had the best planting. Was it original? Not really.
Conceptually, it owed much to the biggest garden I’ve seen at Chelsea, Dan Pearson’s 2015 Chatsworth Garden sponsored by Laurent Perrier.
With its huge boulders, streams, mature trees and naturalistic setting, it challenged people as to exactly what a Chelsea ‘show garden’ was. Whatever one thought of it, it heralded a change in future show gardens, many of which adopted a far more naturalistic approach, in place of the formal designs we’d been used to.
And just like the Chatsworth Garden, you could only truly appreciate the Green Future garden if you had the opportunity to walk through it. Of course, that’s something the vast majority of visitors don’t get. They have to be content to view it from the edges, only getting a glimpse of what its interior contains.
I was fortunate to get onto Jamie’s garden and get to see its central feature: a secluded pond that looked like it was part of a rugged landscape far away from the flat lawns of Hampton Court.
Alongside the water was a deck which provided a view of the garden most visitors to the show would never witness.
Like virtually all show gardens these days, this one had a message. This was all about sustainability and managing water. As is often the case, it’s a message you wouldn’t necessarilly get unless someone explained the thinking behind the garden and what you’re looking at.
Jamie revealed the garden was made of a multitude of recycled materials: boulders from previous show gardens were repurposed, as was the wood for the decking. Even the liner for the pond was made from recycled tyres. But what he was most proud about was the fact that not a single screw or any cement was used in the build.
A cynic might say that with the huge cost of creating a big show garden, without the funding of a cash-rich sponsor, repurposing was merely a means to an end. It was also interesting that the two biggest gardens at the festival were not sponsored, rather they were created under the auspices of the RHS itself. Because of this, unfortunately neither was eligible for a medal or any other accolade.
Apart from their size, both gardens shared some conceptual ideas. Neither had a lawn, both majored on planting rather than hard landscaping and both had naturalistic winding edgeless paths, rather than fancy paving. Interestingly, both also featured only plants grown in the UK.
Tom Stuart-Smith’s Iconic Horticultural Hero Garden was packed with over 12,000 of them, all grown by Sunnyside Rural Trust, a charity helping people with learning difficulties.
On Jamie’s Green Vision garden, what attracted me the most was his mounds of dense, naturalistic planting.
Of the 7,000 plants — all, by the way, grown by his own company Form Plants — the prominent colour palette was blues and mauves, with pops of yellow and crimson.
But what caught my eye was how brilliantly different grasses were used to provide explosions of green. By my reckoning there were at least 14 different varieties.
Despite their similarities, Jamie’s garden was the more impressive, mostly because its was a much more ambitious undertaking. Not only did it have a large water feature, but once you were on the garden it felt like you were in a landscape far away from Hampton. But as I’ve said previously, it was an experience not many visitors would get to enjoy. Tom’s garden, on the other hand, was designed for everyone to walk through.
In sharp contrast to both these gardens, was Will Williams’ Friluftsliv Garden, a Scandinavian inspired show garden created for the event sponsor Viking Cruises.
This was the most Chelsea-like of all the show gardens, and the one that almost certainly cost the most to build. There was nothing recycled or repurposed to be seen. Instead, it was a celebration of contemporary outdoor living. The rear of this highly styled, high-end garden — indeed, it looked like it was designed specifically to grace the pages of Architectural Digest — featured an outdoor luxury kitchen and gazebo covered dining area, while a central lounge area sat alongside a plunge pool and water wall.
In contrast to the hard lines of his architectural landscaping, Will’s planting was soft and naturalistic. I loved the colours and combinations of plants,. grasses and trees he used.
The garden won a Silver-Gilt, although looking at the other show gardens, it arguably deserved a Gold medal. Had it been at Chelsea that’s probably what it would have got.
As good as these three gardens were, what this Hampton lacked for me was genuine innovation. None of the show gardens broke new barriers, indeed, there was a sameness about their planting style and choice of plants.
This event used to be known for its groundbreaking gardens and whilst one cannot write about this year’s Hampton without mentioning Extinction, Felicity O’Rourke’s crash site, I really don’t think the broken fuselgae of a downed plane, spewing smoke and luggage from its ripped open rear, can — in any way — be deemed as a garden.
Finally, let me briefly mention the show garden that took this year’s biggest awards: voted best in show by both the judges and the public.
Whilst I didn’t get to go on Tom Simpson’s Cancer Research Legacy Garden, or spend much time looking at it, nothing about it really caught my eye
All things considered, I think thisbwas a successful Hampton — and it was certainly good to be back shooting gardens and flowers. I know how difficult the pandemic has been for the RHS and for all those in the industry.
Hopefully, next year we’ll see more innovative show gardens and, if I could make one recommendation to the RHS, it would be a return to grouping all the show gardens together, even if its by style category. There’s no question that doing so make the event look a lot more impressive.
Behind the shot: All these images were taken handheld either with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 using the M Zuiko 1.8 75mm lens or with the iPhone 12. Shooting gardens at Hampton is never easy because it’s almost impossible to avoid getting ugly white marquees and event signage in the frame. Because of this, my intention was to seek out interesting ultra-tight compositions. Fortunately, the abundance of naturalistic planting on these three gardens gave me lots of opportunities to do just that. I was also lucky with the weather as it was sunny throughout Press Day, before it bucketed down later that afternoon.Shot at Hampton Court on 5 July 2021.
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 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. With no concerts or major events taking place during lockdown, Gary has turned his attention to creatively capturing the landscapes of West Sussex. On the writing side, he has also penned deep dives into some of his favourite songs beginning with Bryan Ferry’s ‘These Foolish Things’ ‘Ghost Town’ by The Specials and ‘All The Young Dudes’ by Mott the Hoople. Most recently he has written a biography of Robert Palmer. All these can be found here on Medium along with his reviews of gigs and events and interviews with musicians.
