Haute herbaceous: Chelsea flower fashions

To the outsider, the Chelsea Flower Show , now only three weeks away, may seem the epitome of mild-mannered Englishness. Dear old ladies up from the country rhapsodise over blooms and planting schemes; a gentle drizzle descends; the newspaper reports show pictures of unidentifiable plant matter looking green and wet; and everyone is home in time for tea. 

How refreshingly different from the notoriously brittle, shallow and transient world of fashion, you might think. One is all artifice, dependent on the churning mill wheel of trend; the other is organic, positively mulchey in fact, and seeks only to express Mother Nature’s eternal verities.

Nothing could be further from the truth, of course. Gardens are as subject to fashion as every other human endeavour, as Nicola Shulman, a trustee of The Garden Museum in Lambeth and sister to Vogue’s editor Alex Shulman explains. ‘What is considered tasteful changes over time. Dahlias used to be thought very vulgar indeed; so did chrysanthemums and gladioli. Now breeders have started to produce big fat flowers in amazing colours, and the accretion of a particular class connotation has begun to go. Equally, some flowers are so over-used – the evergreen shrub Melianthus major , for example – that after a while you just can’t stand to look at them anymore.’
The floweriest fashion exhibition in London

Gardens and planting schemes which follow fashion are nothing new. In the 17th century, gardeners created parterre de broderie, ‘patterns of low evergreens, laid on flat terraces in elaborate whorls, scrolls, guilloches and loops in conscious emulation of the raised embroidery at the borders of clothes,’ as Shulman explains in her short book written to accompany the Garden Museum’s recent Fashion and Gardens exhibition.

The cross-pollination between fashion designers and garden designers has been mutually beneficial ever since. Philip Treacy’s millinery studio is full of orchids, for example, while designer Christopher Bailey’s S/S 14 collection was apparently inspired by an English rose garden: ‘There are all these very dusky, gentle, soft colours,’ he explained, ‘and then all of a sudden you'll see a spiky, very red rose in the middle of it.’

So far, so innocuous – frocks and flowers do have a certain amount in common, after all. But did I also mention that, according to the British way of thinking, gardening is not just subject to fashion, but also to snobbery? A certain style of English garden aspires to evoke the grounds of a stately home, a romantic, albeit highly landscaped vista featuring ornamental sheep and a ha-ha. Other more groomed and formal affairs bespeak French grandeur, with space perhaps for a dangerous liaison in the topiary maze. Some gardens, however, are irredeemably common. In Yew and Non-Yew: Gardening for Horticultural Climbers , James Bartholomew guides novices through a floral minefield in much the same way that Nancy Mitford outlined 'U and non-U words' and phrases in The English Aristocracy . ‘Non-Yew gardeners’, offers Bartholomew in illustration, ‘use the latest, best, most colourful hybrids devised. What is more, they mix the colours together.’ Get this stuff wrong, and you’ll be marked out as irredeemably suburban forever – although, having said that, historian of the working class Michael Collins recently broadcast a paean of praise on BBC Four to the ‘everyday Eden’ of the suburban garden. 

Anna Pavord , The Independent’s immensely knowledgeable garden writer, writes that gardeners move from the novitiate state, when they are thrilled to discover that ‘surfinia petunia fills a hanging basket as effortlessly as Diana Dors used to fill a sweater’ to a second period of social anxiety when ‘You may feel it's veering close to social ostracism to plant hybrid tea roses (out, out, out) rather than rugosa or alba roses.’  Ultimately, however, she says, you reach a stage when ‘you don't care a damn what anyone else thinks of you or your garden. You are intrigued by plants. You have the confidence to go your own way. You delight in variety, but are not necessarily impressed by novelty.’

That’s all very well for Pavord to say – the rest of us (of course) are desperate to know how we should be dressing our gardens next spring. According to Kendra Wilson, who blogs about gardens at News from Nowhere , ‘Last year, there was great excitement over the Himalayan Blue Poppy (Meconopsis betonicifolia). It was one of the only flowers in a cold and green show (except the hedges: they were brown). I'm not convinced that we'll be as fond of the blue poppy in future. 

‘This year, I predict we’ll be wanting to spend time in Cleve West's Persian garden because we've got used to the idea of heat again and a calm Eastern courtyard with fountains appeals. The Italian contenders – Luciano Giubbilei for Laurent-Perrier and Tommaso del Buono and Paul Gazerwitz for the Telegraph – will be showing clipped box and “roof-trained” lime trees. You are in no danger of flouting the taste rules with clipping, pleaching and pollarding.’

Another sure thing comes from Nicola Shulman, who says that ‘ Primula auriculas , which were very popular in the 17th and 18th centuries, are back. They are unbelievably beautiful and their caps and colours repay close examination for their caps and colours. Tulip passion has come back too – particularly the parrot, fringed and ‘freak’ varieties.’

More generally, says Shulman, ‘Architectural gardens are still “in” as they have been for some time. They are the result of a suspicion – commonly entertained among Advanced gardeners – that flowers are "not quite the thing", as though it were flowers that aspired to the condition of loo-roll cover,  and not the other way round.’ 

The many flower markets of London are testament to the metropolis's affection for all things florid, and today’s architectural garden, adds Schulman, has a new London variant: ‘The vertical garden, which is a sort of enormous fish tank appended to the back of some oligarch's house, with plants smothering the walls like a painting inside the glass, which makes them look as if they are trying to get out but can't. It may be a consequence of security concerns (i.e. if plants can't get out then assassins can't get in)…’

Such modern advances make the Victorian piety carved into my grandmother’s Dorset garden bench seem hopelessly naïve (but all the more appealing for that): ‘The kiss of the sun for pardon, the song of the birds for mirth, one is nearer God’s heart in a garden, than anywhere else on earth.’ 

Tickets are still available for the last day of the Chelsea Flower Show (Friday 23 May 14), one of the best things to see in London for horticulturalists and aesthetes. Visit the website for details.