DIRTY BY DESIGN
Not often do you get the opportunity to design two gardens in a single year for the Chelsea Show; however in 2009 I was delighted to have the opportunity.
My design was in the Urban Garden category – and was a hard and gritty garden designed for true road warriors. ‘The Ace of Spades’ – a biker’s garden, was designed with motorcycles and bikers in mind, right down to the black themed planting and nudity artwork, which turned some heads.
Inspiration for The Ace of Spades came to me by listening to the ‘Motorhead’ record of the same name whilst working on my own bike at home. It’s a bikers’ anthem and I thought that with their love of the countryside and the freedom of the open road, bikers would enjoy somewhere to kick back and relax behind the garage after a long journey – it’s a place where plants and motorcycle parts naturally share the same space.
Thanks to support from Yorkshire Horticultural Supplies and Harley Davidson Motorcycles, the Ace of Spades featured a predominantly black-coloured planting scheme – black bamboos, black zantedeschias and black iris – peppered with silver-coloured plants to represent the chrome trim on a motorbike.
We set a giant Ace of Spades on the back wall created out of old garden spade heads (collected from gardeners in a Wyevale ‘spade swap’) and welded together by Anwick Forge in Lincolnshire. The sunken ‘pit’ contained some awe-inspiring ‘Alien’ furniture constructed from old motor parts surrounded by a wall adorned with airbrushed artwork by artist Susannah Trigg.
I obtained additional satisfaction by being awarded a Silver-Gilt medal.
Ace of Spades - Chelsea
