Inspiration from RHS Chelsea Flower Show

The world’s greatest flower show is a wonderfully rich source of design and planting ideas, as well as the place to spot the latest trends.  This year’s Chelsea was better than ever, with the ten large show gardens offering designs in widely contrasting styles, plus many smaller gardens that really did demonstrate how to pack the proverbial quart into a pint pot. Making the most of limited ground space and going upwards is a key design technique beautifully demonstrated in a wealth of ways. Garden dividers ranged from trellis, laser-cut steel, wood, sculpture and walls – often in short sections or with large ‘windows’ to frame views or specimen plants – and showed that dividing up a small space actually made it appear much larger. The urban-style New West End garden really did look like an outside room, with crisp black and white paving and walls of white stone contrasting with lush green living walls. Varying the ground levels to create raised or sunken areas is another canny design trick to give the impression of greater space: my favourite was the huge sunken patio furnished with sumptuous outdoor sofas in the LG Eco-city garden.

Many of the gardens had carefully chosen colour schemes but this was my favourite: a fresh, zingy yet relaxing combination of yellows, oranges and whites, along with a rich palette of greens. Accessorising was notable not just here but in a number of gardens, with colourful cushions picking out the key colours in the planting. Outdoor seating in many forms appeared throughout in styles from opulent to rustic, often with beams or canopies overhead for shading and shelter. Most charming of all – and an easy idea to adapt for many gardens – was the little slate ‘lean-to’ roof covering a simple wooden table and chairs, in the enchanting Welcome to Yorkshire garden. The gardens weren’t just about flowers: there were edibles aplenty to show that even the smallest space can grow plants that look as good as they taste.  While tailor-made living walls appeared in abundance, in the Lemon Tree Trust garden – a charity that supports refugees to grow food, create beauty and promote wellbeing – plants were growing in guttering, plastic bottles and breeze blocks, inspired by planting seen in Domiz camp in Iraq. Just one of the many ideas to show that gardening needn’t cost the earth.

Seasonal jobs

Buy good sized pot-grown bedding and patio plants to add bursts of colour to bare spots in borders or containers.

Lavender should be lightly trimmed after flowering to remove dead flower stems and the tips of shoots.

Keep wisteria within bounds by pruning all the long, whippy side shoots back to 5-6 leaves from the main stem. Make a diary note to shorten these further in January, to 2-3 buds.

Sow leafy vegetables like spinach, rocket, lettuce and Oriental greens for autumn harvest. If you have a greenhouse or polytunnel, you could have a supply of vitamin-rich greens all winter.

Looking good

Dahlias are back in fashion big-time and many of these prima donnas of the gardening world have huge, showy and brilliantly-coloured flowers. An ideal cut flower, too.

Hydrangeas burst into bloom as summer advances. Mop-headed types have rounded blooms, though my favourites are the lacecaps with daintier blooms in blues and white.

Tender perennials and annuals are fantastic to fill the ‘summer gap’ and provide a wealth of colour once many earlier-blooming shrubs and perennials are over. African daisy, gazania, cosmos, sunflower and nasturtium are just some of my favourites.

Favourite plant. Giant oat grass (Stipa gigantea).Tall and full of grace and movement, this grass looks lit by fire when the low morning and evening sun lights it up from behind.  This is one of the garden’s ‘see-through’ plants so it can even go right at the front of a border.

Sue’s top tips

Thrifty: Late summer is the ideal time to propagate lots of plants for free, by taking cuttings from non-flowering side shoots or tips. With shrubs, select shoots from this year’s growth that are just starting to become woody.

Green:  Covering crops like brassicas (calabrese, cabbage, sprouts etc) and carrots with fine insect mesh is effective, and eco-friendly protection against common pests like cabbage white butterfly and carrot root fly. Handled carefully, the mesh should be reusable for at least several years.

Wildlife: Many wildflowers have now set seed and meadow areas can be mown, but do go over long grass first with a broom or similar, in case hedgehogs, toads and other creatures are hiding there.

Time saving:  Pots need a lot of watering now. To reduce water loss, group containers together so they shade each other and cover the soil with pebbles, slate chippings or mulch. Stand pots in saucers during dry spells, but remove if the weather turns wet.

Read more on Sue’s new website and gardening blog:  www.suefishergardens.co.uk for gardening tips, news and information.