1 If you take home one slice of Chelsea, make it this: spurges, AKA euphorbias, are the unsung heroes of the sunny border – unfussy to the point of thriving on neglect, coping with droughts and providing long-lasting acid-green flowers that are the perfect foil for more ephemeral spring delights such as tulips and irises. I was particularly drawn to the compact evergreen cultivar Euphorbia ‘Black Pearl’ in Chris Beardshaw’s Morgan Stanley garden, although I also spotted architectural caper spurge (E. lathyris, often maligned as a weed), bright-yellow-flowered Wallich spurge (E. wallichii) and lime-yellow cushion spurge (E. epithymoides) all over the showground.
2 Fancy giving room to the prehistoric-looking black-ribbed stalks of scouring rush (Equisetum hyemale), which popped up in a couple of Chelsea gardens this year? Don’t be put off because it’s a relative of the horribly invasive weed horsetail: this is a brilliant low-maintenance architectural plant that loves swampy spots and pond edges. It was shown off to good effect in Nic Howard’s garden, set against a simple charcoal-grey wall and softened with Mexican fleabane (Erigeron karvinskianus). Stuart Towner paired it with Hosta ‘Devon Green’, Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra), Gunnera magellanica and European wild ginger (Asarum europaeum). Scouring rush will spread relentlessly if given free rein, so contain it in a trough or water feature.
3 If you are looking for low-maintenance, low-cost alternatives to paving your front garden, gravel has much to recommend it, and at this year’s Chelsea several gardens took this theme in different directions. Sarah Price showed how to use a Mediterranean plant palette with the papery pink flowers of the Cretan rockrose (Cistus creticus) and the vivid red flower clusters of the blood pink (Dianthus cruentus). Gravel’s also a good mulch for shade planting: see Nic Howard’s row of the huge (and thankfully slug-resistant) leaves of Hosta ‘Sum and Substance’ planted in gravel along a narrow bed that would work perfectly in a gloomy side return.
4 If I was in any doubt about the rise of the houseplant, the visitors swarming over the displays of cacti, succulents and orchids in the Great Pavilion were proof of their staying power. It’s not only because these plants are so Instagrammable – Popsy the Cactus from Craig House Cacti is now so popular she has her own Twitter account – but because for many of us without much outside space, an air plant or two is a far more realistic prospect. A collaboration between Ikea and Indoor Garden Design offers clever ways to display plants indoors, from space-saving hanging planters to planters on peg boards. You’ll see houseplants creeping into show gardens, too, from the blue chalksticks succulent (Senecio serpens) in Sarah Price’s garden to the cast-iron plants (Aspidistra elatior) dotted through Stuart Towner’s garden.
5 Want garden furniture that will never require repainting and doesn’t need covering in winter? What about a slab of rock? Jo Thompson’s show garden for Wedgwood shows how it’s done, with flat-topped chunks of York stone serving as chair or table or both; simply add a comfy cushion or blanket. Just make sure you think carefully about where to position them, as you won’t be able to move them easily. If you’re more of a wood type, take the lead from Nic Howard, whose garden seats are simple cubes of oak, charred and shaped to make the perfect resting spot.
6 If summer bedding leaves you cold, try planting up containers with succulents instead. The Pearlfisher garden cleverly employed echeverias, kalanchoes, sedums, crassulas and the like to mimic an underwater scene, while communicating its message about the perils of marine plastic pollution. The key to success is a very free-draining growing medium (use cactus and succulent compost, and choose a pot with plenty of holes in the bottom) and the sunniest spot you can muster. Remember to bring them inside to a frost-free place once summer starts to fade.
7 It may be the flower show, but some gardens demonstrated that big and bold foliage can offer as much impact. Stuart Towner’s Spirit of Cornwall garden is a masterclass in combining different shapes and textures to create a big-leaved border, using the palmate-leaved false castor oil plant (Fatsia japonica), the pleated leaves of rodgersias and the huge corrugated leaves of Chilean rhubarb (Gunnera manicata). If you want a really unusual bold-leaved foliage shrub for your garden, get your hands on a spikenard (Aralia cordata), as shown off by Tom Stuart-Smith in his Weston garden in the Great Pavilion.
8 Bare concrete in a garden is usually shorthand for something ugly and municipal, but this year’s Chelsea shows how to use this material in an inspired way, from the concrete cubes that break up frothy planting in Robert Barker’s Skin Deep conceptual garden to Stuart Towner’s simple oval concrete patio in his Spirit of Cornwall garden. Just make sure the lines are clean, the finish professional and the planting abundant.
