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Garden name

The Daily Telegraph Garden

Designer

Cleve West

Awards

Gold medal. Best in show 2011

Video tour of garden

This video tour is taken from the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Red Button coverage of RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2011.

Description of garden

This Best in Show garden may at first glance look like an excavated Roman ruin; large column sculptures which are repeated through the design. One, lying on the ground, looks as if it has fallen giving the garden a sense of time passed.

Playing with this idea of time elapsing Cleve has also used plants which self-seed and has placed them as if they've drifted around the garden on a breeze filling the earthy tones of the hard landscaping with accents of yellow from parsnips grown on Cleve's own allotment and red from Dianthus cruentus.

The garden is surrounded by a backdrop of Taxus baccata (yew) and specimen trees of Styphnolobium japonicum (the Japanese pagoda tree), rise up from the sunken gravel area and soften the impact of the columns.

Inspiration / influences

Cleve: The garden was "partly inspired, subconsciously, by a trip I made to Libya where I saw the... Roman ruins of Ptolemais". You wouldn't find a garden like this in Libya or the plants either, but it's a personal garden and Cleve believes that "If you don't create it from the heart, then it's very difficult to do a good job."

The Daily Telegraph Garden. Pictured: Styphnolobium japonicum (Japanese pagoda tree) with a loosely clipped box bush beneath

List of plants in the garden

Styphnolobium japonicum - Japanese pagoda tree

Taxus baccata - Yew

Buxux sempervirens - Box

Acaena microphylla - New Zealand bur

Pastinaca sativa - Parsnips

Dianthus cruentus - Blood pink

Erigeron karvinskianus - Mexican fleabane

The Daily Telegraph Garden. Pictured: Column sculptures by Agnes Decoux and Serge Bottagisio under planted with New Zealand bur and Dianthus cruentus

Also

Cleve West is known for his contemporary garden designs incorporating sculpture. This is his 4th show garden at Chelsea. He has previously won two gold medals (2006 & 2008) and the RHS/³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ People's Choice Award (also 2008).

Links

List of 2011 show gardens - Chelsea Flower Show

Chelsea Flower Show photographs

TV schedule - Chelsea Flower Show

List of 2011 show gardens - Chelsea Flower Show

Archive: Meet the 2010 garden designers