Resilient Gardens

Two of my particular horticultural interests were more than satisfied at this year’s RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival: resilient gardening and plant diversity. I was lucky enough to visit the show twice: first as a punter on the second RHS members’ day and on the last day as a volunteer on the Plant Heritage stand. In this post I’m reporting on the gardens at the show which were planted with an eye to our changing climate.

Climate forward gardening, resilient gardening, sustainable gardening, gardening for climate change: all these expressions describe the same idea. Given the gradual changes in our climate: warmer wetter winters and dryer summers (well perhaps not so far this summer) and extreme weather events such as droughts or flooding, it is vitally urgent that we adapt our gardens to cope with such changes and design new gardens with this in mind. The eight gardens in the Resilient Pocket Planting category demonstrated this admirably. Knowing that your garden will be seen from 360 degrees must pose particular challenges to the designers, but each pocket worked from whatever angle you viewed it. Admittedly they were’t easy for an amateur to photograph, but then that wasn’t the point. Be it rainwater harvesting, biodiversity, food forests, using sustainable materials: the designers of these small spaces had it covered.

I loved the concept behind The Moonshadow Moth Garden. When I give my gardening for wildlife talks, I emphasise the importance of attracting moths into the garden with plants with pale flowers and evening scent. Moths’ importance as pollinators can get overlooked by the arguably more charismatic creatures like butterflies and bumble bees. The creamy flowerheads of Achillea millefolium provided lots of flat landing stages and the hazy purple tangle of Verbena officinalis Bampton made a sheltered habitat.

Conservation charity Buglife sponsored The B-Lines Garden to promote a network of nectar rich corridors for bees and other pollinators. By increasing the abundance and diversity of flowering plants in gardens, we can extend this network across the UK. I was chuffed to see that many of the plants I’ve used in the resilient pocket planting I made in my little front garden earlier this year, featured in this and several of the other pockets. Specifically in this image, the purple-speared Salvia nemorosa Caradonna. Also used in the B-Lines garden is the spiky-leaved Berkheya purpurea with which I had less success when I attempted without success to grow it in the back garden last year but I’m going to have another go with it knowing it’s going to attract in pollinators.

Perhaps the first thing that comes to mind when considering what constitutes a resilient garden is planting for drought tolerance, but given our increasingly wet winters, rain gardens which harvest rainwater and absorb stormwater are just as important. In The Ripple Effect Raingarden, stepping stones made a path across a central wet channel between low mounds planted with species that can withstand temporary waterlogging. Reading about this garden, I’ve learnt a new word ‘berm’, meaning a mound composed of soil and vegetation to slow and absorb stormwater. The designer of the garden, Sarah Cotterill, is based in Ballina, Co. Mayo and the limestone used for the stepping stones is typical of the rock formations found on the west coast of Ireland. In this image the pink flowers of are those of Rodgersia ‘Bronze Peacock’.

I enjoyed chatting to Becky Box the designer of the pocket based on The Edible Garden at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, where the garden will be re-located to the walled kitchen garden. She explained how she divides her time between her garden design work and working in the castle gardens. I loved the willow structures which represent the castle’s chimneys: not shown to best effect in this image I’m afraid.

The designers of the resilient planting pockets were mentored by the doyen of resilient gardening, Tom Massey, whose gardens at last year’s Hampton Court Show and this year’s Chelsea Flower Show have done so much to promote the importance of adapting our planting philosophy to accommodate the changing climate. The designer of the Food Forests garden, Marina Lindl, told me how helpful it had been to consult with Tom when preparing for the show. Sadly I didn’t photograph her garden which highlighted the idea of multi-layered planting from fruit-bearing trees down to root crops. I admired an attractive plant with purple leaves which she identified as tree spinach, Chenopodium giganteum.

I had a lovely surprise when I moved across the Long Water to where most of the show gardens were located. Manning The Climate-Forward Garden designed by Melanie Hick, was Emma Whitten, one of my fellow students from the class of 2017 of the RHS Level 2 Practical Horticulture course at Capel Manor’s Regents Park branch. A garden designer and landscaper herself, she and Melanie often work together on projects. This is a front garden where slightly raised beds surround a porous gravel area designed as a soakaway for sudden downpours. Within half an hour of chatting to Emma in bright sunshine, which showed off the colourful planting scheme wonderfully well, the heavens opened to an intensely heavy thunderstorm. Just the weather with which this garden and the Ripple Effect Garden were designed to cope.

I’ll close this post with an image from the Strive and Thrive resilient pocket planting . This vivid tapestry will be re-planted at a girls’ care home in Ealing. As I left the show on Sunday evening, the pockets were being emptied and whilst it was sad to see such beautiful creations dismantled, it was good to know they were all going to have permanent homes where their messages of resilience in the face of the challenge of climate change will continue to resonate.

Next time I’ll report on more highlights of the show and my wonderful afternoon volunteering in the seed shop section of the Plant Heritage stand in the Floral Marquee.

Kew Gardens, 12 July 2024