As Chelsea Flower Show kicks off next week, have you ever wondered what it’s like to plant a gold medal winning, main avenue garden?

The short answer: it’s relentless, 7am to 7pm, 7 days a week.  A challenge that sharpened my senses and secateurs.  A supportive team like the best I’ve ever been privileged to be a part of.  A physical marathon.  A magical garden that I fell in love with and an experience that taught me so much.

Very Green

Ruth Willmott, designer of the Morris & Co garden, Chelsea Flower Show 2022, generously asked me to join her planting team.  It was a brave choice given I was a Chelsea novice and very green about what I was letting myself in for.

Cut & Blow Dry

Day one and I was allocated to ‘cleaning’.  A perfect job for a Chelsea apprentice.  Every plant is thoroughly ‘cleaned’ before it’s planted on the garden.  It’s like going to the hairdresser before a party.  Anything dead, diseased, or damaged is removed so the plant looks its absolute best.  Even as a veteran Chelsea visitor, I never knew.

Our plants from Form Plants and Kelways were in wonderful condition due to the care of the nurseries and the eagle eyes of Ruth and her studio team in the run up.  Nonetheless every plant needed some sort of titivation.  The grasses took the longest as any yellowing at the base needed to be removed.  It was fiddly but the sort of medal winning detail the judges look out for. 

I learned to clean a plant is to know a plant: how it grows, flowers, reproduces, damages and dies.  It’s a therapeutic pleasure.

Mulch, mulch, glorious mulch

Did you know the soil at Chelsea is dead: compacted, fine and dusty?  In the two weeks I was on site, I only once saw a worm in a strawberry plant, which arrived in a pot from Kelmscott Manor, William Morris’s country home.

Rather than dig into this unhappy soil, plants are carefully placed as far as possible in their pots so they’re easy to remove and replant after the show.  (The Morris & Co garden was replanted in several new community gardens in Islington). The pot rims are covered in a deep layer of fine fluffy mulch which shows off the plant and disguises the pot rim.  Clever!

For big shrubs, we still had to dig into the dreaded soil.  Don’t get me started on how difficult this is.  Thank goodness for the guys who came to our rescue with muscle power and the Niwaki golden spade.  (One of the joys of planting was geeking over other people’s tools but that’s another story).

Size Four Feet

No one gets onsite at Chelsea without steel toe capped boots.  So, Screwfix bound, I bought myself a fetching pair that are a far cry from the Ferragamos of my previous career.  They felt big and were a bit like wearing ski boots.  Ruth said hers were like slippers.  I dreamed of slippers!

In these clod hopping boots, I had to learn to dance amongst the plants, avoiding fragile flower heads as I went.  “Be careful”, “Watch out for the iris”, “Mind the luzula”. 

In the first few days, I was hopeless, clumsy, and bashed every plant with my boots or my bottom.    I was better being the ‘eyes’, passing the mulch, the nips, the trowel, the twine or whatever else was needed to plant and pin each plant into perfection, and then checking the position from afar.  Imagine a dentist and a dentist’s nurse. Well, I was the dentist’s nurse.

Astrantia Test

After a few challenging days, I planted a woodland corner with astrantia and persicaria.  Would I be able to do this?  A plant is only placed and planted when all angles are considered and it’s sitting happily with its neighbours.  Leaf form, flower form, structure are all crucial.  And then there’s the magic that plants create when they grow together and talk to each other, like in Nature.

I needed to recreate this in the artificial conditions of SW3.  Mine was an acceptable first pass but I had much more to learn.

Bare Patches

Before completing each part of the garden, we checked for bare patches and visible pot rims.  None of the planting team was tall so we put up a step ladder to look down on the garden and match the height of the tallest judge, Tom Stuart Smith at 6ft 6”.   All was good but Ruth needed to check.

Horror of horrors, when Ruth climbed the step ladder, it toppled forward and collapsed on the planting.  Lots of planting repair work was needed.  Having suggested Ruth climb the ladder, I felt terrible.  It was one of those moments when you wish you could disappear.

Cleaning & Planting

Slowly, slowly, we made progress cleaning the plants, placing and planting them carefully in each bed.  The stars of the show arrived: roses, irises and paeonies and suddenly we all got excited.

Methodically and magically the garden gradually came together. 

Then the greatest honour, I was asked to plant the front triangular beds, closest to the crowds.  Three beds to be interwoven with showstoppers, Anchusa, Paeonia ‘Dark Eyes’ and Iris ‘Party Dress’ and ‘Jane Philips’, and a supporting cast of Salvia nemerosa ‘Crystal Blue’, Stachys Byzantina ‘Silver Carpet’, Aquilegia Ruby Port’ plus poppies, hare’s ears and wild strawberries in a nod to Morris’ well-known design The Strawberry Thief.  

I felt the responsibility as everyone one of us involved wanted the garden to be glorious, although we never dared say ‘gold medal winning’.  Somehow, over the next couple of days, the front three triangles were planted, working as a pair, trusting my instincts, letting the plants flow, breathe and speak to each other. 

English Weather

But the garden wasn’t yet finished and then the rain came.  And the plants were getting fewer.  Like the loaves and the fishes, Ruth’s planting plan for the final central bed seemed to come together out of nothing.  With a splendid multi-stem Crataegus monogyna (Common Hawthorn) as its centrepiece and Rubus Benenden and Rosa Banksiae ‘Alba Plena’ weaving through the gnarly old stems plus other floral delicacies, it was very, very beautiful. 

A cooked English breakfast in the all-important catering tent became essential to keep us going as we neared completion.

Teamwork is Dreamwork

When the Morris & Co Garden was awarded a Gold Medal, it was appropriate recognition for Ruth’s expert craft and leadership to tell the story of William Morris in the language of a garden. 

Planting for such a lovely garden was a huge privilege.   I felt so lucky to be included and the large team felt like family in those intensive planting weeks. 

I can honestly say, Chelsea Flower Show is like a drug, and I got the bug!