The world’s most prestigious horticultural event is nearly upon us — the Chelsea Flower Show. In recent years, the Irish have excelled, with garden designers such as Diarmuid Gavin, Mary Reynolds and Paul Martin emerging as winners against some of the world’s finest.

Without exception, all have had to battle to be awarded coveted exhibition space by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS). Of the thousands who applied this year, only 65 exhibitors have been accepted.

Ireland is well represented this year, with two new designers, Naomi Coad-Maenpaa and Celia Spouncer, making their debuts at the show. All entrants have to provide full details of their intended exhibitions, from a list of plants to how the garden will be funded. Each garden must also comply with a set of rigid rules and regulations, ensuring that only environmentally friendly products and renewable timber are used.

Coad-Maenpaa, from Co Waterford, is one of a group of graduates from the Pickard School of Garden Design. Her entry is called The Woolworths Garden. “The garden is formal with a contemporary edge, a shift away from the more naturalised style of the past gardens at Chelsea,” she says. “The design relies on perfect proportions and simple textural planting, and is bound on two sides by a geometric trellis decorated with evergreens and clematis. Architectural shapes combine with clipped hedging and pleached limes to create a clean, contemporary look.”

The pleached lime trees (Tilia) give the garden additional vertical squared shapes, which are offset in the four corners by the softer outline of silver birch (Betula). The white trunks of the birch are echoed in the mainly white herbaceous planting. This is all set around white limestone benches with splashes of red in the flowerbeds and on the trellis providing a colour counterpoint.

Spouncer’s exhibit, a city garden entitled A Dream Come True, is the result of a design workshop which she undertook with the children from Class P6 of Cedar Integrated Primary School in Co Down.

“The theme is environmentally friendly gardening, biodiversity and wellbeing,” says Spouncer. “Features of the garden include a glasshouse with solar panels, water bins made from old drinks bottles, recycled paint pots used as plant pots and compost bins made from woven willow. A bog area provides habitat for wildlife, and varieties of native plants were chosen to promote biodiversity. The garden is surrounded by a hemp wall, handcrafted hemp bricks giving an organic surround to the scene.

“Working with local artists, the children have come up with ideas for a backdrop of Irish linen banners printed with images relating to biodiversity, a ceramic bench, mosaic patterns and a living chess set inspired by Harry Potter.

“The hard, urban lines of the city environment have been replaced by soft, organic forms, creating a relaxing but stimulating space.”

Putting the garden together has been an enormous project in itself, one that was enjoyed by the children, teachers and parents. Spouncer adds: “The 200 pupils have worked together with a series of local artists from County Down to create new innovative ideas — celebratory plant vessels crafted to look like seed pods, a copper water feature powered by the sun, mosaic cube seats, a glasshouse made from local ash wood with poems etched in the glass, designer seed packets, the use of lovely natural colours with lime wash and six bins crafted from hazel, willow and rubbish collected and segregated by the children.

“In addition, classes have been involved in an education programme throughout, using the curricula to develop themes about the garden. To finish it off, and to celebrate the bicentenary of the RHS, the 200 children from the school have all hand-crafted a special tile, on which will be displayed various collected poems about peat bogs, water, sun, seeds, glass and flowers.”

For Irish designers, one of the biggest barriers to bringing a garden to international attention is raising sponsorship. Staging a garden at Chelsea at this level is very expensive, and securing a generous sponsor can also prove incredibly difficult.

Designers need to be not only creative but pretty good business people too, as the result always calls for the balancing and juggling of all the demands required to realise the garden.

The Chelsea Flower Show is being held in the grounds of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, from Tuesday 25 May until Friday 28. Tickets are sold out but information is available at www.rhs.org.uk .

Dermot O’Neill’s articles are archived on his website, www.dermotoneill.com

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