“The M&G Garden” 2011

By Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The 2011 M&G Garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2011 was a modern take on the traditional kitchen garden and a garden that really spoke to me.

The M&G Garden 2011 proves the point that a vegetable/kitchen garden doe not have to be or need to be hidden away out of sight. On the contrary. It can become the garden.

“The M&G Garden” 2011 was designed by Bunny Guinness, who is a multi award-winning garden designer, landscape architect and journalist. It encapsulates a belief in sustainable excellence and, as said, is a modern take on a traditional kitchen garden. This is a garden which you can both live with and in and live from, combining the practical with the aesthetic and innovative garden design elements that can sustain and nurture the modern gardener.

The garden is a beautiful space in which to relax, as well as being a working plot to produce bountiful fruit, herbs, vegetables and cut flowers. It features raised beds built from willow and topped with cedar coping, which are planted out with vegetables and flowers for cutting.

Cabbages and beans mingle with clematis and roses, whilst lavender and other herbs ensure the garden smells sweet and fragrant. Large terracotta pots containing a variety of fruit trees are placed throughout the garden.

While very much traditional in spirit, the garden also embraces seriously innovative features including an elegant glass platform. This glass deck, which appears to float, a contemporary centrepiece to the garden, offers both a view of the garden and a sheltered space for people and plants below.

The garden is framed by a series of pleached trees, standing nearly three metres tall, which are trained against wire and ironwork that echo the balustrade design.

The M&G Garden demonstrates how a traditional approach is timeless, particularly when updated for a modern world.

While this may not be something that any of us more ordinary mortals can recreate in its entirety, simply for lack of funds, the idea, however, could be taken up and transplanted – pardon the pun – into a less expensive setting.

The “5 A DAY” garden at last year's Chelsea (or was it Hampton Court) Show was a smaller version of this planter raised bed design though, at that time, more or less solely a vegetable kitchen garden. But, anything along the lines of the size of the latter combined with the former should fit into most gardens and budgets.

You don't have to have the same kind of planters or the huge Italian terracotta pots. I am sure it can be recreated using much cheaper materials for almost the same effect, leaving out, maybe, the floating deck as well.

© 2011