Last week I shared the first three show gardens from this year's Ideal Home Show and today I'm sharing the remaining three. These are just as inspirational, and you'll see today why I needed to split these into two posts - I've too many photos and couldn't choose between them!
4. Three Flow, Chichester College
This garden, the literature says, is designed to flow with varying levels and features laid out in a spiral pattern and the design is made up of geometric shapes. The most notable of these is the eye-catching rebar dome which acts as a central focal point for the garden.
I loved the dome and think it'd be great to replicate in a future garden - not my current garden sadly but it's an idea I'm storing away for the future. It looks simple but I suspect it's not that simple to replicate, but wouldn't it be fab.
I liked the planting in this garden too - lots of greens again - but this time we spherical clipped bushes and the always beautiful alliums.
There was one element I wasn't so keen on and that was the raised beds, although beautifully done and made from lovely material I thought they looked a little old-fashioned and at odds with the more modern dome shape. MOH liked them and thought I was being too critical, but they won't be making it into one of our gardens. For me they look a little bit too much like that fake cladding you used to (and probably still can) get. What do you think?
That said, I did like the lights in the raised beds.
5. Wellbeing Yoga Retreat, Capel Manor College
This garden aims to recreate the feeling people get when they go on a yoga retreat and the garden is meant for a young couple in London, who both have a challenging work-life balance. And it was definitely a calm garden, and while I liked the ferns this was my least favourite garden.
The planting is dense - which I like - and the grasses and bamboos provide movement. This garden also had rusty corten steel elements, which we saw quite a bit of at the show, but even that didn't do it for me. I think the concept is just too simple for me. Sorry.
6. Salaam (Peace), Shuttleworth College
Now this garden is completely different to the others, and strikingly so. It's inspired by the courtyard gardens and colours of Marrakech, which I have fond memories of as that's where we honeymooned immediately after our wedding back in 2007. The garden is set out as a mini Chahar Bagh, a Persian garden style which divides the space into four parts.
There's bold colours, tiled furnishings and light from solar and LED lamps.
The planting is simple - and on reflection quite minimal - and uses lots of architectural plants like Trachycarpus and olive trees.
There's planters on castors which can be used around the garden, or even indoors.
So there you are, six very different gardens from this year's Ideal Home Show. Each had elements I either have or would have in my garden, or simply parts that I admire even if they're not for me. The one thing I took from looking at these gardens, is that I wouldn't want to be without a garden, whatever size that might be.