SO Gardening highlights some of the top gardening trends from the recently held Chelsea Royal Horticultural Show. From embracing buttercups to candy-coloured planting, here are a few highlights.

Log On

If you’re looking for a new way of dividing up your space, try building a log wall like the one in Paul Hervey-Brookes’ Art of Viking garden: not only is it relatively cheap and pretty to look at, it will act like a giant bug hotel, too.

Consult your colour charts

This year saw eye-catching combinations: Jody Lidgard’s Montessori Centenary garden was a jolly jumble of peonies, dahlias and geums in candy colours. Some of the best combinations were both subtle and surprising.

Leave the shears in the shed

Topiary got softer and lower, as designers rejected tightly clipped box balls in favour of soft mounds of yew, pine and even beech, as seen on Tom Stuart-Smith’s RHS Bridgewater garden and Kate Gould’s Greenfingers garden.

Bring out the copper

Hammered copper has been around as an interiors trend for a while, and now popped up here, in Helen Elks-Smith’s Warner’s Distillery garden as a copper-clad green roof and water feature; and in a raised bed clad in coppered hammer in David Neale’s Silent Pool Gin garden.

Reclaim and recycle

From an ecological point of view, parts of Chelsea finally seemed to be waking up to the issue of sustainability. Chris Beardshaw’s Morgan Stanley garden was a valiant attempt to minimise the environmental impact of a Chelsea plot, from carrying out groundworks using an electric excavator (instead of a diesel engine) to growing plants in recyclable taupe pots.

Information courtesy of:www.theguardian.com