It’s Chelsea Flower Show time! England‘s biggest garden event has opened its doors for a week of spectacular show gardens, floral displays, garden art and market stalls. It’s such a hustle and bustle in the grounds, as you’d expect from the industry highlight of the year for designers, builders, nurseries and keen gardeners alike. If you want to see the show gardens up close, turn to the daily BBC live coverage instead, or visit the RHS website. Garden photographers have their moment at the event, too!
One of this year’s trends appear to be woodland gardens. Not a new thing, of course, and here in the Pacific Northwest we are truly fortunate to call native some of the most gorgeous woodland plants on earth. I’m not just talking of western sword fern and salal, either.
For design inspiration, I love to walk through Kruckeberg Botanic Garden north of Seattle. It’s a shady woodland oasis with so many of our native plants growing in a setting of dense, mature tree canopies and natural understory planting. Most residential gardens have at least one shade corner where cool, sheltered areas can be created using evergreen ferns, the heavy lifting hostas, but also native perennials such as Anemonella Thalictroides or Oxalis. Don’t shy away from those darker areas in your garden — you’ll appreciate them in the summer heat!
Let’s go make some shade, and let’s get planting!
