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The foresightful history and culture of gardening in the United Kingdom means that contemporaneous garden - makers have a diverseness of directions to adopt . The well - have it away country house gardens with their traditional extravagant follies are still an inspirational force , apparent in theplayful body of work of the Bannermans . The popularizing effect of a television receiver makeover show tolerate Diarmuid Gavin to practice sophisticated design for shock value and challenge entrenched perceptions of what the average backyard can be . extremely idiosyncratic , visionary somebody such as Charles Jencks are always in the forefront , making garden that lead by personal example . And most recently , the fusion of art , nature and carving seen at international garden festivals such as Chaumont in France and Metis in Canada has impart conceptualism to outdoor spaces and pave the means for avant - garde designers like Tony Heywood .
rivulet and planting at Broughton Grange — the regular recurrence of plant repeat is a component of New Wave planting , but colour is key to the English style . Photo by : Andrew Lawson .
If any designer epitomize the state ofBritish garden designat the moment , it is Tom Stuart - Smith . After a quiet start as a graphic designer working on diachronic preservation task in England through the 1980s and 1990s , Stuart - Smith burst to hump after 1998 with a drawing string of six Au - laurel wreath - winning garden in just nine years at the Chelsea Flower Show , which really put him on the map as a clothes designer . His diplomatic style also made him the immediate choice for Britain ’s most aristocratic patrons‐including the queen herself , who in 2002 commissioned Stuart - Smith to design a Modern garden next to the entry drive at Windsor Castle .
An other garden at the Chelsea Flower Show demonstrate Tom Stuart - Smith ’s ability to conflate minimalism with the English taste for realistic planting . Photo by : John Glover .
His oeuvre is a good barometer of style because it unite the English “ tapis ” tradition of vivid herbaceous - border intention , in the tradition of Gertrude Jekyll and the Arts and Crafts move , with the inflow of new naturalistic and ecological planting estimate from Holland and Germany — the so - called New Wave planting movement — with its sway drift of pot and tall perennial range in realistic fashion , specially impressive in later summer and former autumn .
What this means in practice , as seen at Broughton Grange for exercise , is that Stuart - Smith ’s molding designs tend to be composed of drift planting of powerful plant , which are repeated through the garden and organized with all the care and panache one would expect of the British tradition . The whole is contribute a cleared bodily structure that is formed by just a few coinage of grasses — typically miscanthus , stipa or carex . The main deviation between the British interpretation of New Wave planting and the continental one is in the continued British vehemence on color , in bicycle-built-for-two with body structure , and a liking for as wide a image of plants as possible . A pared - down plant palette is emphatically not the British way , and this is echoed in Stuart - Smith ’s work , which unites horticultural complexness with structure .
Chelsea 2006 was another gold - medal year for Stuart - Smith , who was acclaimed for this virtuoso child’s play on contrast stuff : Cor - ten steel , stonework , Turkish boxwood and succulent planting . Photo by : Andrew Lawson .
This meeting of horticultural traditions could be see to the most marked point yet in Stuart - Smith ’s garden at the Chelsea Flower Show in London last twelvemonth ( prove impart ) , where a intercellular substance of gage offset choice flowers such as bearded iris , salvias , genus Verbascum , knautia , genus Allium , euphorbia and genus Stachys .
After the unchecked ebullience of 1990s border plan , Stuart - Smith ’s control and sentience of scale in planting has been influential . moment of right-down flair are also his long suit . In the Chelsea garden prove left , for instance , the tonal kinship between the unsheathed brown stem of the “ ordinary ” leatherleaf viburnum ( Viburnum rhytidophyllum)—which Stuart - Smith found produce in unusual received form in a German nursery — and a wall of rusted Cor - ten blade beyond — hint a confidence hold of Tom ’s years as a landscape painting designer work on a big scale of measurement .
For more information on the employment of Tom Stuart - Smith seewww.tomstuartsmith.co.uk .
