The 2012 Chelsea Flower Show

Enter a virtual world

RHS Glamourlands: A Techno Folly is a dynamic, abstract spectacle designed to represent the Dorset coast. The installation, within a mirrored industrial steel chamber, combines moving animation, a computer- game soundscape, and abstract structures covered in sparkling jewels. There are also gnarled, wind-blown pines, and partially laminated plants to give the impression of being both alive and preserved.

Behind the concept are Tony Heywood and Alison Condie, who live in Paddington, and are otherwise responsible for beautifying many of London’s leafy squares.

“I want to take people into another dimension, the way gaming devices do,” Heywood says. “We are all living in highly exaggerated and intensely bright atmospheres, getting lost in TV and computer games, and I want people to walk in here and equally lose themselves.”

Capability Brown, the heralded 18th- century English landscaper would be turning in his grave, Heywood reckons. “This notion of reflecting the untouched, wild aspect of nature in our gardens challenges the expectation that a garden has to have that romantic aesthetic, woodland and roses.”

Hodges has set the bar high in the new Fresh Gardens category and, as a result, the field is packed with creations of boundary-shifting horticultural proportions.

The Easigrass Garden is a verdant metaphor for jealousy and desire, with
a cage at the centre to represent the feeling of entrapment when the green-eyed monster strikes. Delve inside and you are confronted with a jungle of green Perspex rods, artificial grass, and white orchids, surrounded by ferns emerging from a carpet of white Sutera.

Embracing technology

Have your phone at the ready: gardening has just entered the cool kids’ world. In this garden, a wall of vertical planting has been meticulously constructed to form a QR code, so when you scan it with a smartphone, you are directed to a website that tells you more about the creation. This is a bold design from Scotscape Ltd and Treebox Ltd, and is the first time the show has dabbled with such technology. Moving on up, kids!

The Chelsea Flower Show is May 22-26 | From £22
Royal Hospital Chelsea, Royal Hospital Road, SW3 4SR
Tube | Sloane Square 
rhs.org.uk

Fast facts

• The Royal Horticultural Society’s first Great Spring Show was held in 1862 at the RHS garden in Kensington.
• Not even the first half of World War I could halt the show. However, it was cancelled in 1917 and 1918.
• There are 250,000 flowering species of plant out there. Only 85 per cent have been catalogued.
• Some 160,000 people attend the show each year – a number limited only by the capacity of the 45,000 sq m (11-acre) ground. All tickets are pre-booked.
• The oldest known flower, Archaefructus sinensis, dates back 12.5 million years. Discovered in China, it is thought to have grown in the shallow lakes at the time of the dinosaurs.
• It will take about 2500 man hours over 17 days to build the Trailfinders Australian Garden this year, with 38 tonnes of tools, equipment and materials sent from Australia.
• In 2011, Diarmuid Gavin’s Irish Sky Garden was the first at Chelsea to be suspended in the air.