Chris Beardshaw
Chris Beardshaw - our herbaceous border and stumperies specialist
Herbaceous borders
The herbaceous border is a truly iconic British garden feature. The number of perennial plants required, the intricacies of the designs, space required and extensive maintenance, all contributed to the herbaceous border falling out of favour with gardeners in recent years. Chris Beardshaw believes that this trend can be reversed and that these incredible displays of floral fireworks should return to our gardens once more.
Revival HQ is Arley Hall in Cheshire, with its impressive double herbaceous borders. It鈥檚 from here that Chris shares his extensive horticultural knowledge and expertise. He gives us his ultimate design tips, shows us how to get the best from our borders year after year and also advises on how to deal with the gardener's 'enemy number one鈥� 鈥� the weed.
On his revival campaign he visits a garden which is a true labour of love, originally designed by one of our most celebrated garden designers 鈥� Gertrude Jekyll. He聽also meets a mother and daughter who are championing the aster 鈥� the must have plant for any herbaceous border and he tries to teach two non-gardening students the key design elements of the herbaceous border.
Stumperies
In his second聽revival, Chris Beardshaw wants to return a Victorian curiosity聽- the stumpery - to our back gardens. Similar to rock gardens but created from upturned stumps, logs, roots and pieces of bark, they were created to display the spoils of intrepid Victorian plant hunters.
On a visit to Biddulph Grange (the location of Britain鈥檚 first stumpery), Chris discovers how fern fever swept the nation in the 19th century and that stumperies were the perfect way to display the most popular plants of the age, but as fashions changed, ferns fell out of favour and the stumpery was consigned to the compost heap.
Chris also heads to North Wales to meet a man who is as fascinated with ferns as he is, and who wants to put ferns back on the horticultural map, and also sets off on a woodland trail to see the stumpery as nature intended.
Chris bases his campaign at the most famous stumpery in the country which was聽created by HRH The Prince of Wales in the grounds of Highgrove House. Chris creates his own mini-stumpery to show off his favourite ferns to full effect and demonstrates how to grow your very own mushrooms on a log.
