Chelsea 2009: Alders

The last week has been fairly quiet. My furniture has arrived and amazingly, it is the correct item. My language skills were obviously better than I believed.

The main issue has been sourcing the trees that give a sense of maturity. The plants are selected for damp / waterside conditions so I decided very early in the design process that I wanted to use Alder.

Alder is not commonly used by garden designers in urban settings, this is perhaps because they are not a particularly ornamental tree, in comparison to Silver Birch and Prunus – both of which have ornamental attributes . However, this garden is supposed to look wild and naturalistic and the Alder gives a feeling of authenticity. It would have been very simple to opt for Salix var. britzensis but I felt that would have been too obvious.

Alder is not commonly used by garden designers in urban settings, this is perhaps because they are not a particularly ornamental tree, in comparison to Silver Birch and Prunus – both of which have ornamental attributes . However, this garden is supposed to look wild and naturalistic and the Alder gives a feeling of authenticity. It would have been very simple to opt for Salix var. britzensis but I felt that would have been too obvious.

I drove to a nursery near my office in Brighton to have a look at Alnus incana ‘laciniata’ and Alnus glutinosa. After spending a good hour standing in front of these trees I decided that they were too small and too thin. The trees need to be sturdy and well proportioned as they are very important to the planting design.

Go for bigger trees then! Not that simple – My dilemma is that the more mature the tree, the taller it becomes. Being quite a small garden (7M X 5M) I don’t want the trees to tower over the everything else and create a feeling of disproportion.

It was back to the office to hit the phone and find some trees. After much discussion and several phone calls I found a supplier of 14-16cm girth Alnus incana which are 3.5 M tall with a clear stem of 2.0M. This is perfect as they will create a sense of enclosure without being too overbearing.

We have a week to go before we start – though I nearly turned up yesterday (having got a bit eager and misreading the exhibitor manual). That would have been a bit embarrassing if I’d starting digging up a royal park on my own. Arguing with the park warden…..”yeah, it’s for the Chelsea Flower Show”. It’s always the simple things that catch you out!