Emma Barttelot – The Painted Garden

Having cut her teeth at the RHS Malvern Spring Show and assisted on the Daylesford Organic Garden at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, 26 year old Emma Barttelot has risen to the challenge given to her by the RHS and has created a show garden for BBC Gardeners’ World Live at the NEC. The show runs from 11 – 15 June 2008.

Emma has drawn on her love of art, colour, travel and the Tuscan countryside and come up with a garden design that is not only inspirational but is also simple, fun and accessible. Even the most amateur of gardeners will see something that they can take away and apply to their own back yard or window box. More ambitious gardeners will revel in Emma’s bold use of colour for the backdrop, door and gate but also be charmed by her perfect selection of soft, wispy planting in a more gentle colour palate to compliment the stronger paint colours.

The garden is an artist’s garden, somewhere to reflect, be creative, relax and paint. The Italian style rendered back wall is washed pale blue and is fronted by two gnarly olive trees. The fuchsia pink garden gate and its surround form an oval to frame a painted view of a Tuscan landscape in the distance. Planting beneath the olives is highly scented lavender angustifolia ‘Hidcote’ and the reclaimed silver birch and chestnut perimeter posts are entwined with pale pink Rosa ‘Eglantyne’.

Upon entering the garden the eye will be drawn to some beautiful hand painted, 100 year old Cretan pots, relics of a bygone age that will add an element of mystery and beauty to this garden. One pot will sit at the front and to the right hand side and the other will sit amongst the perennial planting. A traditional water rill is raised up and framed by clipped box hedging which rises to approximately 30 cms. The water feature will be set off with a few pink Nymphaea ‘Gloriose’’. Steps lead up to a more informal gravel area where the eye is drawn to the back wall and the bold painted gate.

The simple painted bench and gate echo the uncluttered theme of the garden and the landscape features are limited to the warm ochre gravel, sky blue wall and gates and sandstone terracing.

Key plants are a pale blue mix of delphinium for their statuesque appearance and beautiful colours, Stipa gigantea for movement and sound, Achillea ‘moonshine’ is welcome in the garden because it combines well with almost everything. It is a terrific foil for many other colours including blue, and pink. The flat-topped, canary yellow flower clusters and bright silver foliage light up the garden and are the perfect contrast to the formal box cubes. Salvia lavandulifolia and rosmarinus officinalis each add a heady scent and of course will be eternally useful in the stock pot!

The Painted Garden
Plant List

Olea Europaea
Lavandula angustifolia ‘Hidcote’
Rosmarinus
Stachyis byzantina
Buxus sempervirens squares
Buxus sempervirens hedging
Rosa Eglantyne
Rosa ‘New Dawn’
Alchemilla mollis
Achillia Moonshine
Astrantia Roma
Circium rivulare Atropurpureum
Delphinium
Euphorbia palustris
Geranium maderense
Geranium himalayense Gravetye
Geranium Guiseppe
Heuchera Plum Pudding
Lupinus Inspiration
Myosotis alpestris/ Brunnera
Salvia lavandulifolia
Salvia purpurea
Stipa gigantea
Stipa tennuissima
Carex ‘Frosted Curls’
White strawberries
Cornflowers
Nymphaea ‘Gloriose”