The past years 100 years of Chelsea have seen bedding, exotics, even plasticine flowers come and go. These past few shows have highlighted the rise of the naturalistic and the fluffy…culminating this year in swathes of cow parsley, meadow-flower mixes, poppies and delicate waving grasses.
“Ooh, that grows like a weed in my garden but it looks lovely ..here” was something I heard time and again on the show garden I worked on this year. Anthriscus ‘Raven’s Wing’, the delicate, darker-stemmed form of the humble cow parsley, got a lot of attention on it’s appearance in at least four show gardens.
But like many of these blowsy borders and specimens, they’re best regarded like the froth on your coffee… an enjoyable textural addition early on, but soon gone.
Plant these ephemerals in swathes and ribbons to suit their “me? ..oh I just self-seeded here” vibe. And site them among harder workers who’ll not mind covering for them when they sink; euphorbia, hemerocallis or geranium in sunny spots, box or ferns in semi-shade.