I ’m very aware that I am not open my Hampton Court reporting with classically beautiful gardens . In my seeking to offer the good overview potential , I rarely get around to detail my favourites , which was certainly the case last year . So this twelvemonth , instead of start with a protracted stroll around the showground , which I have offered onmy Facebook page , I am beginning with those garden that most captured my vision . Today ’s offering may not do it for you , but others this workweek certainly will .
You may have seen enough of Corten blade in show gardens – I certainly thought I had – butBrownfield Metamorphosis , designed by Martyn Wilson , made me think again . Regeneration specialist St Modwen commission this garden to highlight its role in create attentive public exposed place on brownfield website . The designer seek to celebrate the period in between demolition and reconstruction when nature move in , create a impermanent landscape painting and often encouraging wildlife to move in . He cites New York ’s High Line Park and the old MG Rover site in Birmingham among the emplacement that inspired him : “ They invite the public into what was a unsafe and taboo space , into what is now a work of graphics , representing the centre of their several communities .
Concrete blocking , typically employed as barriers to prevent humans and vehicle from entering a building website , are repurposed here as seat . I especially enjoyed the contrast of tactilePilosella aurantiaca(fox and lad ) against the sun - bleached , composite Earth’s surface . Ledbury - ground sculpturer Simon Probyn , who works with recycled steel , created the massive steel structures that demarcate the corners of the plot of ground . These brutish forms are softened by grasses and umbels ; garden - worthy varieties of plant life radical that are often groundbreaker of derelict sites .
My favourite structure is the sequence of rusted steel ring part buried in debris . This is a equipment which could be used in a gravel garden or perennial border to make structure , tad and interesting shadows , or , in open space , for children to scramble through .
Martyn Wilson points out that sites destined for regeneration are often hoarded , with the community making their crisscross by way of street artistic creation . On a section of hoarding reclaimed from a regenerated site at Etruria Valley in Stoke - on - Trent , Artist Louis Masai has painted a salient bee wander a needle , represent the pollinator ’s vital character in the survival of ecosystem . Great body of work , but something about the emplacement of the painting , or the amount of billboard , made it feel divorced from the rest of the garden .
Whilst not a garden one might wish well to recreate in its entirety , it is both an precise representation of a brownfield web site and a quad packed with idea one could comprise into a small-scale garden . I ’ve already referenced the steel basketball game , but why not utilise recycled concrete forms as seats , benches or retaining walls ? They ’d be cheap and , buffer by planting , not nearly as ascetical as one would imagine .
A rust bowl occupy with water might pull in Bronx cheer and hedgehogs into the garden , whilst buddleja cultivars , such as the fulsome B. ‘ Wisteria Lane ’ used here , are butterfly attractive feature . Deep , rough gravel ought to subdue gage and provide a more permeable surface than paving , thereby abridge go off and the risk of implosion therapy . Herbs such as thyme , fennel and oregano flourish in such an enviroment .
Of of course , brownfield web site are ephemeral landscape – mentally ill , changing , fleeting habitats . maintain a garden like this would require careful maintenance to prevent it from turn back to an ugly mass of tangled undergrowth . Yet , well tended , and on a gay day , I can imagine myself enjoying the warmth of the approximate concrete , the drama of the steel structures and the Harkat-ul-Mujahidin of bee foraging among the blossom . My beverage of pick in such a setting ? It could only be a Rusty Nail . TFG .
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Categories : Flower show , Flowers , Foliage , Garden Design , Hampton Court Flower Show , Perennials , Planting Design , works , Small Gardens , Wild flower
post by The Frustrated Gardener
