Dry Planting Garden Wins Best in Show at Chelsea

Cleve West’s garden for the Daily Telegraph has won Best in Show at the Chelsea Flower show. It is full of plants that would work well in this area (although there may be some that are not frost hardy). His inspiration came from a trip to Libya.


Here’s a clip of the garden in construction :




& a video of him receiving first a Gold & then Best in Show :




Links to his garden & planting schemes through Crocus UK : Cleve West Daily Telegraph Garden

There were many gardens featuring dry planting & here you can see : the BBC coverage of all the show gardens plus schedules for the BBC coverage for the rest of this week.

Here is a link to : the RHS website dedicated to Chelsea Flower Show

The first garden that Monaco has exhibited also won a Gold medal.

This year seems to have been a particularly good Chelsea, despite the unusally warm weather having brought on plants too fast but has also meant that there are some that are not always seen at the Show. You should bear in mind when looking at the Show Gardens that this is a “Show” and many of the plants would not be flowering at the same time, however, the judges apparently mark down gardens that have plants from too many flowering times.

There are many design ideas that could be used in our own gardens that don’t require a huge budget and should be a great inspiration.

Lots of the exhibits feature ideas for attracting beneficial insects and wildlife which we should all try to incorporate into our own gardens.



All planting into open ground should be left until the Autumn now, when it is cooler. It is also a good time to give hardy perennials The Chelsea Chop. If you can’t bear to lose flowers now, at least cut herbs back, such as basil, mint and melissa to prevent flowering and encourage more growth in September when they come out of their Summer domancy.