Principal Landscape Designer at Landform Consultants, Catherine MacDonald, is designing The Boodles Garden at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2024. This will be MacDonald’s sixth RHS Chelsea garden and marks her return to the show since her last gold-medal awarded garden in 2018 for Seedlip.
Themed ‘art in nature’ the planting scheme, topiary, sculptural metal arches and water features are inspired or represent aspects of specific paintings and art movements, including Pointillism and Impressionism. Subtle links to prominent paintings at the gallery pervade the garden’s design and planting, as a visual of where nature represents art, and vice versa.
The garden features a green toned walkway beneath a series of sculptural arches as an ode to Canaletto and Claude’s elements of repetition and perspective, as well as honour Klimt and Menzel’s proclivity concerning fabric and intricate detail. A succession of bespoke textured metal water features define the space, providing surfaces to play with light and reflection reminiscent of Renoir, Monet and Seurat.
The planting palette is predominantly green and act as a foil for the warm bold shades that weave and punctuate the garden representing the artist’s brushstrokes and texture in pointillist and impressionist paintings.
James Amos, Director, at Boodles said: “RHS Chelsea has become a firm feature in the Boodles annual events calendar and we are excited to be returning once again”.
The build of this Sanctuary Garden will be managed by Gadd Brothers Trees & Landscapes.