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Clare Agnew likens designing a garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show to creating a theatre set   21/04/2008

Clare Agnew, who won a silver-medal for her show garden in 2005, likens the creation of her gardens at Chelsea to designing a film or theatre set.

This year, Clare has designed a 22 metre-wide show garden titled “The Reflective Garden”, sponsored by Ruffer LLP. The Reflective Garden aims to provide visitors with both shelter and structure for contemplation and relaxation.

Clare, who brings past experience as a BBC set designer to her horticultural work, says that the visual impact of the gardens inevitably create emotional responses, which literally set scenes. “When I begin to plan my show gardens for RHS Chelsea Flower Show, I think about creating a vista: a three-dimensional environment for people to walk through and experience. The visual balance and the use of colour are the means by which I look to evoke a response from visitors.”

Clare comments on The Reflective Garden: “The garden plays on two senses; as the eye is drawn to the reflective pools the ear is drawn to the sound of running water nearby. The garden is calm, tranquil, textural and reflective; largely green but interspersed with a few jewels.

“The layout of The Reflective Garden is geometric, both on plan and in its vertical structure, but the planting draws mainly from marshes, ditches and reed beds, with Zen influences in the foreground. The clipped cubes of box and the umbrella shaped plane trees are a halfway house reconciling the sharp geometry of the pools to the softer planting around them.”

clare@agnewdesign.com
www.clareagnewdesign.com