Inspiring Garden Border Design Ideas As Seen At Chelsea Flower Show 2024
Whether you are a novice gardener looking for tips and ideas on how to get started in the garden, or a knowledgeable horticulturalist seeking out new species of plants, the Chelsea Flower Show has something for everyone. I have been going to Chelsea for several years now, finding it a great place to visit to obtain ideas on how to design and plant my garden borders.
Those boundary and flower bed areas of gardens can be tricky to get right; it can be hard to work out what to plant for a cohesive edging display. As the show is full of inspiring garden border planting schemes and innovative garden design layouts, I went along this year to see what was trending in garden border displays and to check out the latest imaginative planting schemes.
Whether you are looking for garden border colour arrangements or ideas on how to mix and match your garden border planting configurations, take a look at some of the best borders that I saw at the Chelsea Flower Show 2024:
Plant border colours: white, green, purple and orange:
The flower borders at Chelsea 2024 were much less colourful than in previous years. Displays featured a lot of green and white with just a touch of purple, a smidgen of blue, or a mix of orange (always via the most popular flower on display this year - the Geum). There was no dense, vibrant planting going on, as colour was just added as an accompaniment to mostly green planting schemes. Where colour was included, it was via delicate stems as opposed to showy, large-headed blooms (like dahlias or peonies - previously popular flowers that were predominantly missing from the show gardens this year).
A predominantly green and white scheme was used in The National Garden Scheme Garden, designed by Tom Stuart-Smith.
Key garden border flower: Cow Parsley
Previously often categorised as a weed commonly found on the roadside, cow parsley was everywhere this year at Chelsea as an ornamental stem embedded between lots of other soft and delicate planting schemes. This wildflower is great for biodiversity in your garden and at Chelsea, it was used around the base of trees to hide the roots and to add height to the back of borders. While cow parsley can take over in your garden if you are not careful, removing any overgrowth is simple as it lifts out of the ground easily.
Cow parsley was used generously in The National Garden Scheme Garden, designed by Tom Stuart-Smith.
This Pimpinella major 'Rosea' pin cow parsley could be found on display in the Great Pavilion.
Height Layering
I saw lots of layering by height in the Chelsea Gardens this year. Areas and sections of gardens were zoned by laying shorter plants towards the paths and walkways and then strips of plants behind were organised by height. This worked particularly well in the gardens with higher ground areas. Low-level planting featured at the front, while tall plants such as alliums, foxgloves and irises stood tall at the back.
Layered planting with height was used effectively in The Octavia Hill Garden, designed by Ann-Marie Powell.
Considering backdrops:
The backdrop that surrounds the planting was very much a focus for garden borders. On GARDENA’s Chelsea interactive garden, the wood cladding was painted a very dense black shade in order for the vibrant white foxgloves and tangerine geums to pop out against the dark backdrop. In the World Child Cancer’s Nurturing Garden (designed by Giulio Giorgi), the terracotta planters and accompanying earthy-orange gravel created a sunset colour scheme to accompany the soft pink irises and delicate yellow planting.
World Child Cancer’s Nurturing Garden, designed by Giulio Giorgi.