Award-winning garden and landscape designer Ruth Willmott is
designing the Morris & Co. Show Garden at RHS Chelsea 2022.
Discover more about the planting and layout of the garden in her second
Chelsea Flower Show blog excerpts below.
Ruth Willmott in William Morris's garden at Kelmscott Manor
Plants
William Morris had a passion for English hedgerows and an affinity to
the natural world, so it’s crucial to me that the garden works with
nature. I want the planting to reflect a natural, countryside setting
and provide a welcoming environment for wildlife.
Morris was an early advocate of using native species and
long-cultivated non-natives to attract birds and bees, which is an
approach I use in all of my garden designs. So, I’ll be mixing cottage
garden favourites such as iris, peony, dianthus, geranium, foxglove and
the soft velvety foliage of Stachys byzantina to achieve blue,
purple, earthy red and apricot tones. The garden will also feature
shrubs chosen to provide shelter, shade and food for wildlife.
Trees
Look out for weeping, twisted and pollarded varieties of willow in
the garden. This choice was inspired by Morris’s famous ‘Willow Boughs’
design, alongside hawthorn foliage that appeared in his ‘Jasmine’
design.
Elsewhere, cotoneaster, Berberis and viburnum will feature,
while roses, which were another of Morris’s favourites, will grow in
both rambling and climbing varieties. I’m particularly excited about the
spectacular ‘winged thorn’ rose (Rosa sericea subsp. omeiensis f. pteracantha), with its translucent red thorns which glow like rubies in the morning and evening light.
'Trellis’ and ‘Willow Boughs’
Layout
Of course, the naturalistic world that inspired Morris was largely to
be found in the rural landscape, while our Chelsea Show Garden will be
in the heart of London. So, to create the sense of being immersed in a
country garden, I’ll use plants in abundance. For me, whether urban or
rural, a garden should always have a far greater proportion of soft
planting over hard surface. The Morris & Co. Garden, much like all
of my projects, will work on a ratio of 3:1 planting to hard
landscaping.
Central to the design is a quadrant, inspired by another of Morris’s
iconic designs, ‘Trellis’. This will consist of a series of
inter-connecting pathways forming the shape of the garden. It’s this
structure that will allow me to manage the volume of plants. All
gardens, in fact, benefit from structure underneath soft planting. This
allows plants to ramble freely without creating a wholly untamed nature
reserve!
Putting everything together
Colour and harmony will be key to the success of the garden so, as
the plants slowly begin to emerge, now’s also the time to see how they
work together. Most importantly, I’ll be looking at how they blend with
other elements in the garden such as the central pavilion, with its
laser-cut screens layered with two contrasting colours in the shape of
the ‘Willow Boughs’ design.
Everything is looking positive and, with just days to go until we go
on site to begin the build, the weather is looking promising too… just
as long as the plants don’t peak too soon!
The Morris & Co. Garden can be found on Main Avenue at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show from 23-28 May 2022.
To find out more about the garden design practice Ruth Willmott Associates, click here.
Read Ruth’s first Chelsea Flower Show blog here.
