May 2023 would be a month to remember for the British Academy of Garden Design (BAGD). The Chelsea Flower show has been the greatest garden event on any landscaper, horticulturalist, green finger, and general plant enthusiasts’ calendar for 111 years! It is a world famous and highly prestigious event with televised coverage and fierce competition. People come from around the globe to both visit and compete for the rare opportunity to be recognised. This year, the Silver Gilt winners for Balcony & Container Garden of the year were two of BAGD’s tutors, Filipa Teixeira and Jorge Rodriguez-Martin.
The Shifting Garden
Their winning design was named The Shifting Garden and was a stunning use of a small space with some very clever solutions. The most impressive being the newly trademarked eco-friendly composite material that the team created specifically for the show.
The Chelsea Gardener, where both tutors are employed, is a high-end garden design company based in London’s Chelsea so both Jorge and Filipa are well versed in the challenges of city gardens. Their entry to the flower show needed to reflect the standards of the company and of the designers themselves. Filipa was lead designer and Jorge describes himself as the ‘annoying guy who had to make all the budget material and changes’ but both tutors describe the whole process as an intensely positive team bonding experience.
Filipa chose to flip the norms on small spaces and populate it with large statement pieces that succeeded in giving the impression of a larger space. Her approach was to make a restful, quiet retreat and her use of a minimal colour palette was a clever way to introduce that feeling of space. The hypertufa bench and three large containers contributed beautifully to a serene ambience but because they were intent on creating a sustainable, eco-friendly garden, they went as far as recreating the entire recipe of the stone/concrete material. The original “ingredients” included peat and Portland cement, so they replaced peat for coconut coir and used environmentally friendly cement, CEM 2. This cement has a higher percentage of lime therefore drastically reducing its carbon emissions. They also used Mediterranean and tropical plants to soften the industrial feeling of the material and mixed succulents with grasses, Alliums and a Cycad, trailing Ceanothus and a trailing Euphorbia. There was also an extremely fragrant Salvia ‘Natchlinder’ and another aromatic Geranium, ‘White Ness’. This unusual mix worked beautifully.
Both Jorge and Filipa are natural born gardeners with Filipa starting out in her mother’s garden in Portugal where she learned to combine the tropical plants of Madeira with Portugal’s mainland flora. She then went on to landscape architecture and found the transition to garden design to be an interesting shift in perspective. Landscape architecture deals with large scale sweeping spaces but garden design involves many size and space limitations as well as its different uses, not to mention the needs of the occupants. Jorge cut his teeth as the show manager for the RHS and is an innate problem solver. He has also been a tutor in BAGD for 8 years and the academy can thank him for suggesting Filipa join forces. Jorge’s teaching approach is to immediately treat every student like a designer and Filipa finds her role as a tutor incredibly rewarding and especially enjoys being inspired by her students.
The medal winning accolade of the Chelsea Flower Show is testament to the high-achieving attitudes of both tutors. The project was a collaborative exercise and without the combined skills of a team of talented designers, it would never have come to life.
While competitions and medals may not be the main goal of a garden designer, both tutors found the whole experience to be a massive learning curve and something they are keen to repeat. Yes, they won a Silver Gilt and yes, they have instantly generated new business from the experience but if the only take away from the entire experience is their newly trademarked sustainable and eco-kind composite material, well that alone is worth it!