The highlight of the year for Britain’s gardeners is the Royal Horticultural Society’s annual Chelsea Flower Show. It’s held in the grounds of the historic Royal Hospital Chelsea for veterans who have a distictive red dress coat uniform with a tricorn hat. The Show often has a royal visitor or two.
One of the big attractions is the range of show gardens. These are produced by invited designers or horticultural organisations like local authorities’ parks departments. While construction of each show garden takes under a week, the planning goes back many months. After designing, the plants must be specially grown. Obviously they must be at their best, even if naturally out of season. Some must be fooled into believing it is either earlier or later in the year.
So the control of growing conditions has to be carefully and expensively regulated. To cover all of this, the gardens are often sponsored by companies, some not connected with horticulture directly. One such garden intended for this year’s show was sponsored by the Swiss company Amaffi Perfume House. It was to feature many scented plants so there is a logic to their sponsorship.
When this year’s Chelse Flower Show was cancelled because of the pandemic, many of the plants had already been grown. Instead of wasting them, Amaffi commissioned a designer to use them to renovate a derelict courtyard at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital as a thank you for their work during the pandemic.
The hospital garden is now a calming, beautifully scented retreat for hospital staff and patients to enjoy all year round. It features topiary domes and pyramids, multi-stem trees such as Cornus (dogwood), medlar and virburnum, and a host of bright flowering perennials such as roses, dianthus, iris, alliums, lupins and salvia. Scented evergreen shrubs for year-round structure include Sarcococca hookeriana and Osmanthus.
Ongoing complementary maintenance of the garden will be provided indefinitely to ensure the space looks at its best for staff and patients
The Hospital Trust explains.
AMAFFI made the decision to gift the garden to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital as a token of their gratitude for the selfless work of staff during the current pandemic. To repurpose the plants for the hospital garden, AMAFFI enlisted the expertise of RHS medal-winning plantsman and RHS Ambassador Jamie Butterworth, who runs Butterworth Horticulture. Jamie and his small team who are based in London, have been working around the clock this week to transform the large outdoor space into the luxurious and restorative garden. Ongoing complementary maintenance of the garden will be provided indefinitely to ensure it is always looking at its best for hospital staff and patients.
The inner courtyard has been completely transformed with large dramatic topiary domes and pyramids and several multi-stem trees including cornus, medlars and virburnum. The tree canopy has been underplanted with lush foliage and combinations of bright and scented flowering perennials including roses, dianthus, Iris, alliums, lupins and salvia and scented evergreen shrubs including sarcococca hookeriana and osmanthus, to provide year-round structure.
The garden will provide a quiet, calming and scented area for staff to destress after working with intensive care patients. It will also be a place where patients recovering from long hospitalisation can literally get a breath of fresh air.
The show gardens at the Show are dismantled as quickly as they were constructed. Some like sensory gardens are transfered to suitable sites, with some adaptions. This garden will be giving its benefits to the staff and patients at the hospital for years to come.
Truely a case of beauty coming out of tragedy. At other times profound tragedies have led to improvements in justice and civil rights. Let’s hope that the events of the past few days will undergo a period of reflection to address the factors that have caused them.