Way back in May the Wilson McWilliam Studio exhibited a highly acclaimed garden at the Chelsea Flower Show which won a silver-gilt medal. I became very familiar with this garden as I followed it’s progress and wrote a weekly blog post over 10 weeks as it was developed for Chelsea. But the story of […]
The reinvention of a garden after it’s appearance at the Chelsea Flower Show
It can be an abrupt end to the Chelsea Flower Show, when after months of work, sweat and sometimes tears, the gardens are dismantled within days. The area is grassed over so efficiently that it’s hard to believe that anything was there before, so it’s great to see a garden that I came to know quite […]
The Chelsea Flower Show – paving ideas for your garden
There were some really beautiful plants at this years Chelsea Flower Show, but beautiful as the plants were, it’s the lay-out of the garden, how it’s divided up, that really helps to hold the design together, as demonstrated by the paths in this lovely garden by Jo Thompson: This crisply cut paving, butted closely together, gives a contemporary look to […]
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2013 – inspiring gardens
After a busy few months culminating in a few weeks of hectic activity, the RHS Chelsea Flower Show is over for this year. There were lots of inspiring gardens in all sorts of sizes, here in no particular order, are a few of them with ideas that you may like to use in your garden. Regular […]
The Cloudy Bay Discovery Garden at the 2013 Chelsea Flower Show
After blogging about the progress of Andrew Wilson and Gavin McWilliam’s show garden for the past 10 weeks, the Chelsea Flower Show week has finally arrived and their garden was unveiled. What a transformation, from this rather scruffy patch of land just a few days ago to this beautiful space: Here’s Gavin doing a bit of tweaking before the […]
The Cloudy Bay Discovery garden at the Chelsea Flower Show 2013 – week 1
Over the past 9 weeks I’ve been lucky enough to observe the progress of the plans for Andrew Wilson and Gavin McWilliams’ show garden for this years Chelsea Flower Show. It was a hive of activity to day when I went along to see how it was all going with just 4 days to go before it’s revealed […]
The Cloudy Bay Discovery Garden at The 2013 Chelsea Flower Show – week 5
The Plants The weather is finally warming up, we have sunshine and longer days, which is just what’s needed for the plants with just five weeks to go to the Chelsea Flower Show. Andrew Wilson and Gavin McWilliam’s concept for their show garden is a space of rugged, textural quality, with aspects that provide […]
The Cloudy Bay Discovery Garden at the 2013 Chelsea Flower Show – week 6
Time seems to be flying by and the Chelsea Flower Show is rapidly approaching, only six weeks to go, hard to believe it’s spring when there was snow on the ground outside my office window last week. I briefly mentioned in my first post, that Andrew Wilson (half of the Wilson McWilliam partnership designing the […]
The Cloudy Bay Discovery Garden at the 2013 Chelsea Flower Show – week 7
Whether you’re thinking about designing your own little patch of garden or designing one for a client, the inspiration has to be the the starting point of the whole process. For their Chelsea Flower Show garden Andrew Wilson and Gavin McWilliam have a lot of inspiring material from the beautiful Cloudy Bay area of New Zealand, their […]
The Cloudy Bay Discovery Garden at the 2013 Chelsea Flower Show – week 8
THE INSPIRATION OF THE CLOUDY BAY VINEYARD Designing a show garden is very different to designing a garden for a specific client, so this week I thought it would be interesting to look at how Gavin and Andrew developed the ideas for their Chelsea garden. The major influences were the location of the vineyards in […]
The Cloudy Bay Discovery garden at the 2013 Chelsea Flower Show – week 9
Creating a show garden, how the process begins. The countdown for Andrew Wilson and Gavin McWilliams’ garden for the 2013 Chelsea Flower Show continues. There are 9 weeks to go now before the garden is completed, but the journey began way back last year. Once the decision was made to enter a garden […]
Cloudy Bay Discovery Garden at the 2013 Chelsea Fower Show – week 10
Imagine that you’ve got a successful, busy garden design practise, have won lots of awards and accolades, then on top of all that you decide to design a show garden for The Chelsea Flower Show, arguably the most prestigious garden show in the world…. oh, and half of the partnership is a long-standing […]