One of my greatest joys is gardening, there is always so much to learn and discover about plants and I like how the subject brings people together. It’s wonderful to pop round to a friend’s house and see how their garden is growing or swapping cuttings and seeds. I especially like to grow scented plants and have gradually built up a collection that flower at different times of the year so there is something to look forward to.
I was absolutely thrilled when garden designer Camellia Taylor of The Garden Taylor contacted me about creating a visual of her show garden design, The Natural Affinity Garden for Aspens to be shown at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 2023.
The garden is sponsored by Project Giving Back and is one of their Gardens for Good Causes that will be dismantled after the flower show and rebuilt at Aspens who provide care and support for people and their families with learning disabilities and autism in Tunbridge Wells.
Camellia’s background is in psychology and her garden was Inspired by the similarities between the mathematical growth patterns of neurones and plants, linking nature and human uniqueness.
The design combines cool calming greens with Kent ragstone walls and boulders. Each planting zone represents one of the senses for visitors to interact with.
The wheelchair accessible path allows visitors to cross over drills of scented plants creating a sensory experience and leads to a seating area.
At the rear of the garden is stone seat with a carved indent, allowing water to gently flow over the surface. Directly behind the seat are floating stone shelves with plant pots made from mycelium that visitors can use to grow their own plants.
Sketch Up model of garden design by Camellia Taylor
The brief was to create a hand painted visual of the garden using watercolour and graphite. The colours needed to be cool and calming with the textures of the ragstone gently contrasting with the watercolour.
Working with Camellia’s designs and sketch up model, I began to draw the layout of the garden and hard landscaping, making sure the drills of scented planting between the path and stone walls were in the correct position.
Planting zones and watercolour tests
One of the challenges of the project was try and keep most of the plants nondescript, as on the day of set up there may be issues with a particular species and replacements may need to be substituted. The plants also needed to be shown as they would be at the time of the Chelsea flower show in May. This meant that many wouldn’t be in flower or would be smaller and have different colours to the images I was researching, for example Foeniculum Purpureum (bronze fennel) is much more compact and greener early on in the growing season with just a hint of soft purple in its foliage.
As I didn’t have access to the plants I researched each species using a variety of secondary sources and focused on capturing shapes and textures using mark making. It was a very different way of creating an image as normally my work is observational and it was interesting to focus on textures, shapes and colour in a more subjective stylised way of drawing. It also helped to have some knowledge and experience of growing some of the plants as I could get a better feel for them.
Exploring mark making for plants with pencil.
Test for watercolour hedge.
With the ragstone elements I had a few physical examples so I could see the colours and textures of the surface. I was also able to visit the beautiful Delos garden at Sissinghurst Castle and look at the dry stone walls and mounded shapes of the planting.
Kent Ragstone walls at Sissinghurst Castle, Delos Garden.
Mediterranean inspired planting at Sissinghurst Castle, Delos Garden.
The final illustration will be used to represent what the garden will look like and will appear on leaflets and social media.
The images below show some of the stages of the illustration in progress.
Outlining some of the plant shapes with a black fine liner before painting with watercolour.
Watercolour painting of garden illustration in progress.
Finished watercolour and graphite illustration of the garden.
Creating the visual from Camellia’s design has been a wonderful project to be part of and it has appealed to my love of gardening and fascination with how our senses evoke memories.
I’m very much looking forward to seeing how Camellia progresses with the project and can’t wait to see her design come to life at the Chelsea Flower Show in May 2023.
