SHOW GARDENS

Poor old designers. Last year they all made drought gardens and it poured down all summer. If this year were to be all bog gardens, no doubt we’d fry. Happily, the designers have found a sensible compromise: lots of formal pools.

Cancer Research UK Garden MA21 Designer: Andy Sturgeon

Water does not have to be a focus as in a fountain or a central pool. Here it is used rather like a series of reflective, rectangular, rippling “beds”, over and beside which the path passes, sometimes at quite a height.

Gavin Jones Garden of Corian MA1 “Elevations” Designer: Philip Nash

“Symbolic journey” stuff. A path sweeps along over Dantesque circles of water and between screens of water to reach a circular, floating island. Could be heaven or hell.

The Laurent-Perrier Garden MA20 Designer: Tom Stuart-Smith

The last word in water control: here in long, brimful, raised zinc tanks. Restful yet enlivening; not to be mistaken for benches.

Studio Lasso RS1 “Garden in the Silver Moonlight” Designers: Haruko Seki, Makoto Saito

A contemporary evocation of Japanese gardens by Japanese designers, with a still pool designed to reflect the moon. And at MA19 is Arabella Lennox-Boyd’s interpretation of Japanese gardens, with a floating path and lines of waterlilies winding across a garden that is almost all water.

The Savills Garden MA18 Designer: Philip Nixon

Once again for Savills, Nixon makes a cool, geometric garden of rectangular flowerbeds and raised pools wrapped around with low hedges. Large vertical frames lend it a “gallery” flavour. Crisp and smart. For a naturalistic approach to pools, see Patrick Clarke and Sarah Price’s QVC garden at RHM37.

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