CAF to create The Giving Garden at The Chelsea Flower Show

Howard Lake | 18 March 2007 | News

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Where are the Wild Things?

On The CAF Giving Garden at The Chelsea Flower Show 2007

www.cafonline.org

Lovers of touchy-feely, exuberant planting will adore the Charities Aid

Foundation’s Giving Garden inspired by ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ the cult

children’s book by Maurice Sendak. Designer Tiggy Salt has created a dreamscape

scene from the book for sponsors Charities Aid Foundation (CAF).

CAF aims to create a world in which giving to charity is a recognised part of

everyday life. Through the garden CAF will be able to reach new audiences of

donors, people who might never have considered giving, and others who could be

using their giving to make even more of an impact.

In the book, the protagonist Max has been sent to bed early without his supper

for bad behaviour and as he slips into sleep, he dreams that his bedroom has

become a forest. The focal point of the garden is his bed, which will be planted

up with a camomile lawn, lavender and passiflora, all plants with sleep inducing

properties, to suggest the dreamscape of the story.

Bananas are key plants in the garden and a signature plant for Tiggy who uses

them in nearly all the gardens she designs, for the incongruity of seeing a

little bit of the jungle in London. In this garden she has selected them for

the fresh young green paddles, the way they move in the wind, and just when the

big ones start looking a bit tatty and shredded the baby ones are at the ready,

waiting to unfurl so there is always more fun to be had! They are friendly,

happy plants and just like the wild things they suggest far away, tropical

places.

Ornamental rhubarb has been chosen for its big, generous leaf size, but also for

the incredible colour and exuberance of the scarlet plumes which defy gravity

when the specimens are in good health.

A passionate rhubarb eater, Tiggy is determined that the rhubarb triangle in

Yorkshire does not disappear, so using them in her garden is a way of pledging

support for this disappearing industry!

The beautiful botanical engineering of the umbels of Angelica, supported by

their magnificent fleshy stems enchanted Tiggy and she chose them to tower above

small children and encourage them to really get in amongst them, be overwhelmed

and excited by their shapes. Catalpa have gorgeous, friendly heart shaped

leaves which create a great mop of a head and the long slender beans are both

fascinating and rather unexpected. Alocasia macrorrhiza, the Giant Elephant’s

Ear along with the mighty gunnera manicata, are both great plants for kids to

hide beneath and be inspired by.

For elegance and restraint in this otherwise playful and chaotic garden, the

deep plum and brown ruffles of Iris ‘Quechee’ and Iris ‘Dutch Chocolate’

contrast nicely with the glaucous swords of their leaves. Tiggy believes that

for children, plant names are very important and by describing a colour as

chocolate, it is much more evocative than simply brown. Plant nomenclature is

always seductive and who hasn’t been swayed by a good name?

The fruit of the artichoke, like the umbels of angelica is an incredible feat of

engineering. Their scales suggest the fangs and talons of the wild things and

anticipate their arrival, as do the other somewhat overwhelming shapes and sizes

of the other plants. Visitors to the garden will see the possibilities of light

and shade that these plants can create.

The CAF garden with all its sumptuous planting along with the current RHS

initiative to highlight the joys of gardening to children will hopefully

encourage more young people to pass through the Chelsea Flower Show turnstiles

this year and in turn inspire them to get planting. The CAF garden is

ultimately a garden for children and is designed with children over five

years in mind (the over fives are permitted to visit the RHS Chelsea Flower

Show).

22-26 May 2007.

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.