Centenary star

Above: The view of the fuscia garden at Hidcote

Above: The view of the Pillar Garden at Hidcote

TV presenter and garden designer Chris Beardshaw fell in love with Hidcote Manor as a young child. It was there that he first marvelled at the blooms of a Davidia and he still recalls the delight of exploring Hidcote’s famous garden rooms.
“It’s just a magical garden for children because you are constantly peering through hedges into different little glades. It is made for adventure.”
Now, as Hidcote launches its centenary year, Tewkesbury-based Chris is placing it firmly in the international spotlight with his 2007 Chelsea show garden, which aims to recreate the spirit of Hidcote.
The project follows his success last year with the Wormcast Garden, which won the double accolade of an RHS gold medal and the BBC RHS People’s Choice Award. Such was the success of the design, based on a 1920s Jekyll and Mawson garden in Dorset, extra security had to be brought in to control the crowds of visitors trying to see it.
“We had a phenomenal response. People were literally barging each other out of the way,” he recalls. “It was like a rugby scrum to come near the garden.”
He puts its popularity down to the fact that, unlike many other exhibits, he concentrated on plants rather than architectural features.
“People fell in love with the fact that they felt we had rediscovered plants,” laughs Chris, presenter of The Flying Gardener and Hidden Gardens.
“It’s very much what I do; my style is very plant-orientated. For me a garden is about the way a gardener interacts with plants and architectural features just work as rewards to tempt you around the garden.”
It is this style that he admires most at Hidcote, the way each ‘room’ has glimpses of other areas and offers choices of direction.
“Every time you come to a crossroads you get four different view points and four different directions. You never walk it the same way every time. It is why it is a remarkable garden.”
Hidcote was begun in 1907 by Lawrence Johnston, who divided the 10-acre site into 28 different areas, each with its own feel. By its heyday in the 1930s, the garden was leading the way in new styles and new plants, many gathered in the wild by Johnston himself.
He favoured a ‘jungly’ feel with tall plants at the front of borders and things overflowing onto the paths. There were tropical specimens in a plant house, alpines protected from winter rain by glass frames and specially constructed acid beds for rhododendrons.  The Wilderness was even home to flamingos.
The manor and garden were acquired by the National Trust in 1948 and over the following decades much of Johnston’s style was lost, as low-maintenance planting replaced his flamboyant schemes.
It is this exuberance that Chris hopes to capture in his show garden and he has drawn inspiration from an oil painting by Johnston that shows a mass of flowers in a riot of colour.
“I’ve taken some of the notable features of Hidcote and brought the planting back to the original bright pink, orange, yellows and, vibrant reds.”
The show garden, entitled Celebrating 100 Years of Hidcote Manor Gardens, will have one of the largest expanses of planting ever seen at Chelsea, with four 8m by 4m beds in a plot that is just 23m by 12m. They will be filled with shrubs and herbaceous specimens, underplanted with bulbs.
There will be lots of shrub roses and at the front will be more tender, exotic plants, such as Geranium magnificum and yellow Asphodeline lutea, moving through to shade and moisture-lovers at the back, with hellebores, narcissi and Geranium endressii.
Hedges of beech and clipped yew will evoke Hidcote’s compartmentalised style, and dramatic colour will come from the juxtaposition of soft pink Magnolia soulangeana and golden laburnum.
“There will be a contrast between the soft and very sensuous pink and the screaming acid yellow of the laburnums. The more it zings and punches you in the face with blooms, the better.”
The design will echo Johnston’s style of strong structure set against billowing planting that blocks your passage through.
“It is that tension between formal geometry and boisterous planting that I think creates atmosphere in a garden.”
Hidcote’s famous stilted hornbeams and a small area of lawn are designed to provide a breathing space after the floral onslaught.
Despite Chris’ insistence that this is a plant-led garden, some of Hidcote’s memorable architectural features will be recreated. Set into the yew hedge will be a reproduction of the lion’s head fountain found in Hidcote’s courtyard and he is planning to replicate one of the lead-roofed summerhouses.
Traditional craftsmen have been drawn into the project to build the summerhouse and fountain, and lay the grid of limestone flag paths.
“You would use exactly the same people if you were creating Hidcote from scratch,” comments Chris.
Specialist nurseries, including Batsford Arboretum in Gloucestershire, are busy growing the plants that will be needed – far more than will actually be used to ensure enough are in flower for Chelsea.
“You can end up looking at a fantastically produced garden that’s green with lots of buds.”
Other plants will be provided by Hidcote and Johnston’s French garden, La Serre de la Madone.
Meanwhile, the contractor, Peter Dowle of Newent, has a long experience of creating Chelsea gardens and staff from Hidcote will be helping with the planting.
Yet, although infinite care is taken with details – period correct wheelbarrow, watering cans and glass for the summerhouse – the garden will not be a model of perfection.
“It will have weeds coming through the path,” explains Chris. “Every garden has imperfections, that’s part of the beauty of it.”
There will be moss, lichen and algae on the summerhouse, as he is trying to show Hidcote in maturity.
“I want to recreate the garden at the point when Johnston was able to walk around it and realise his dream was reality.”
The garden has secured one of only a handful of sites on the flagship Main Avenue at Chelsea. It means visitors will be able to view the garden from different angles, something that Chris believes is crucial to the design.
“The way Johnston composed Hidcote you can look at the same feature from four different angles and it looks completely different.”
Indeed, such is Chris’ admiration of Johnston’s skill, he often uses Hidcote as an example in his landscape design work.
“If I am trying to explain to somebody how to design a garden, Hidcote is the garden I always go back to.”
Chris is an experienced show garden designer: this is his fourth Chelsea entry and he has also exhibited at Malvern, Hampton Court and Gardeners’ World Live. He admits that building a garden from scratch in just under three weeks is an immense task.
“We’re creating at Chelsea what it’s taken 100 years to create at Hidcote,” he comments.
“It is pure theatre and the responses you get when people see the garden make it all worthwhile.”
Just as dramatic are the recent changes at Hidcote itself. In the late 1990s the Trust began an ambitious 10-year project to turn back the clock at the garden and place it once again at the cutting edge of horticulture. Extensive research has uncovered old photographs and original plant orders, which showed the true scale of what Johnston had achieved. Already, the tropical plant house, demolished in the 1950s, has been reinstated, the Pillar Garden is replanted with the strong colours Johnston used and work has begun to restore the bulb area and rock bank that mimicked the landscape of the Alps.
An anonymous donor originally gave £210,000 on condition the National Trust matched it pound for pound and in 2005 the garden was pledged a further £1.6 million over the next six years. Fundraising is under way to match this amount.
As well as work on the rock bank, it has allowed electricity to be installed by the Theatre Steps, to help with hedge-cutting, and the opening of a new tea bar. In addition, the Trust is creating on-site student accommodation, as part of its drive to create a centre for horticultural education.
And it is the future of Hidcote, as much as its past, that Chris plans to honour at Chelsea.
“It will celebrate the garden as it stands today and what it will be in the future.”

Hidcote Manor Garden is open from March 24 to July 1, Saturday to Wednesday, 10am to 6pm; July 2 to August 31, daily except Thursday, 10am to 6pm; September 1 to September 30, Saturday to Wednesday, 10am to 6pm; October 1 to November 4, Saturday to Wednesday, 10am to 5pm. Admission is £8 adult, £4 children, £20 family, free to National Trust members. For more information, call 01386 438333 or visit www.nationaltrust.org.uk

The Chelsea Flower Show runs from May 22 to 26. Tickets range from £12.50 to £44, depending on day and time of entry. All tickets must be booked in advance. Ring 0870 9063780 for RHS member bookings; 0870 9063781 for non-member bookings. For more information, visit www.rhs.org.uk