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Top 10 show-stopping plants in bloom at Chelsea Flower Show 2022
From white alliums to charming aquilegias...
Plant trends come and go, just like hemlines and hairdos and, being the catwalk of the horticultural world, Chelsea Flower Show is the place to see the hottest plants and the designer choices that will influence what you see in garden centres and online plant stores this summer and beyond.
With the show back in its traditional May timeslot there is an abundance of wonderful flowers for designers to choose from at this time of year. But the weather has a big impact on what will be looking its best and there are always a few surprises and last minute substitutions. Here's a selection of the top 10 show-stopping plants in bloom at Chelsea 2022 and tips on how you can use them to get the Chelsea look at home.
Lupins
A Chelsea favourite, these wonderful spires of richly coloured flowers have graced many gardens and displays this year. Once a cottage garden favourite, lupins have been tarnished with the old-fashioned brush for too long, and, being prone to aphids, they sometimes put off new growers.
Rich purple spires of Lupinus ‘Masterpiece’ graced the Perennial Garden, With Love by Richard Miers and similar shades pop up in Grow2Know’s Hands Off Mangrove garden, and in the containers on the small balcony space of the Cirrus Garden by Jason Williams, it's hard to miss 'Towering Inferno'.
To be on trend with your lupins, don’t plant them en masse, but mix them up with similar height irises and foxgloves and a froth of softer grasses and smaller, lower growing flowers such as geums and California poppies. If they’re hot at Chelsea, it must be time for a revival of these wonderful plants.
Buy now: Lupins 'Masterpiece' and Buy now: Lupins 'Towering Inferno
Baptisia australis
A little bit tricky to grow, as it requires very well-drained acid soil, the false indigo plant fits in well with the wilder planting styles at Chelsea this year. A member of the pea family, like lupins, this is a great plant for pollinators and for the soil, as the roots add valuable nitrogen.
In Tony Woods' Garden Sanctuary by Hamptons, the baptisias stand out against the lush greens of angelica and honesty. With typically grey-green foliage and subtle flower spires, baptisias combine well with many early summer flowering plants including alliums, verbascums and poppies. Look out for delicious cultivars ‘Dark Chocolate’ and ‘Pink Truffle’.
Rosa glauca
Roses are part of Chelsea tradition, but beyond the more formal displays in the Pavilion by growers Harkness and David Austin, in the Show Gardens, roses are more in keeping with the wild theme of the overall show.
Look out for Rosa glauca in Andy Sturgeon's Mind Garden and Paul Hervey-Brookes' Brewin Dolphin Garden where the pale grey-green foliage gives it a subtlety and informality that makes it easier to combine with other plants such as poppies and daisies, and the open bright pink flowers are quite modest but great for pollinating insects.
Alliums
Purple alliums have been popping up in Chelsea Show Gardens for years, but this year, it’s the time of the white allium. With perfect lollipop spheres atop straight stems, they manage to be ghostly and ethereal at the same time as making a bold statement.
Look out for the white globes of Allium ‘Silver Spring’, ‘White Empress’ and ‘Mount Everest’ combined with white foxgloves, spires of yellow lupins and fine grasses like Stipa gigantea, and other bulbs like camassias. For great combinations, see the meadowy mix in the Stitchers' Garden by Frederic Whyte.
Iris
From the more subtle sibirica species to the blousy glamour of the bearded germanica cultivars, irises are used in many of the Show Gardens. And in the Great Pavilion, the British Irish Society celebrates its centenary with a special display. The ‘beardies’ as they are sometimes known, bring a bit of drama and flounce to the wild and woolly mixes of smaller flowering plants.
Look out for the gorgeous Iris ‘Jane Phillips’ in the gold-medal winning Core Arts Front Garden Revolution garden by Andy Smith-Williams, where you can see their architectural foliage to full effect in the gravel garden planting. Germanica irises are great for hot, dry sunny planting areas as the rhizomes need to be baked through the summer to produce the spectacular flowers.
Anchusa azurea ‘Loddon Royalist’
This is one of those plants that put in an appearance in many planting schemes at this year’s show, from Main Avenue Show Gardens to the All About Plants and Sanctuary Gardens. The outstanding deep blue flowers are really striking and rich in pollen, making them a magnet for bees. With quite rigid stems, they don’t need staking and make a far less fussy alternative to delphiniums, if you are looking for a rich summer blue.
In the Mothers for Mothers Garden, designer Pollyanna Wilkinson uses them in a lovely wild planting mix, with Alchemilla mollis, Geranium phaeum, nepeta, opium poppies and festuca and hakonechloa grasses.
Lamium
They might be easily mistaken for stinging nettles, as the leaves and flowers look similar, but they are much more garden friendly as they don’t bite like the wild ones. Also known as dead nettles, these are fantastic shade plants with beautiful, nectar-rich flowers loved by bees.
While the Best in Show, A Rewilding Britain Landscape, features the yellow Lamium galeobdolon, naturally mingling in its waterside wildflower scheme, in Sarah Eberle’s dramatic MEDITE SMARTPLY Building the Future, the balm-leaved red dead nettle, Lamium orvala, is tucked in among primroses, aquilegias and ferns, evoking its woodland habitat. A good choice for shady gardens and small spaces.
Succulents
What do you get if you cross a hardy sempervivum with a tender but dramatic, dark leaved aeonium? The Chelsea Plant of the Year of course. The new hybrid x Semponium ‘Destiny’ brings together the best of both plants to create this supersized succulent with an all-year-round ruby red rosette of fleshy leaves. It fought off 19 other stunning new plants, including a pink Salvia Amistad and the repeat-flowering Armeria pseudarmeria ‘Dreamland’.
This stunning new succulent is one to keep on your patio in a pot, where it will cope with winter temperatures in sheltered gardens, down to about -2C. It is a fabulous solo plant, but it also looks good planted up with smaller rosette-type aeoniums and fleshy sedums, as on the Surreal Succulents display in the Great Pavilion.
Aquilegia
Perfect for the wild style of this year's Chelsea, aquilegias bring colour and draw in the pollinators with their dainty blooms. While many gardens featured classic single varieties of Aquilegia vulgaris, it was the doubles that caught attention and stood out.
A worthy mention goes out to Aquilegia ‘Ruby Port’ that was used in the floral archway as you enter the show, in trade stand container displays, and to beautiful effect in the ethereal meadow of the Morris & Co Garden by Ruth Willmott, where the dark wine-red colouring pairs with the Papaver somniferum 'Black Peony' opium poppy.
Peonies
May is peak time for peony flowers, so no Chelsea would be complete without a good scattering of these early summer stunners. While the familiar ice cream pink and tissue paper ruffles of classic ‘Sarah Bernhardt’ weren’t so popular this year, designers used peonies with more open blooms, like Paeonia itoh ‘Callie’s Memory’ and the brooding ‘Dark Eyes’ that are more in keeping with wildlife-friendly planting.
Peonies looked great used in planters too, where their more formal looks contrasted with airy, meadow-style companions and salvias, which is a great combination for a perennial container.
Buy now: Paeonia itoh ‘Callie’s Memory’
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