Rooted in Cumbria

From Cumbria to the international horticultural stage, some of the greatest achievements begin on the smallest scale. This year, two Cumbrian growers took plants that can be grown in even the smallest garden to the Chelsea Flower Show, where their exhibits were awarded not one but two prestigious Royal Horticultural Society Gold Medals.

Meanwhile, back in Cumbria, another gardener welcomed visitors from around the world with a carefully curated indoor plant display inspired by one of horticulture's oldest traditions. Together, they show how extraordinary achievements can grow from modest beginnings, driven by vision, dedication and imagination rather than scale.

At Chelsea, one display celebrated the intricate beauty of auriculas in a traditional auricula theatre, a tiered display designed to showcase the exquisite detail of every flower, while the other demonstrated how compact wisterias can bring the elegance and fragrance of this much loved climber to even the smallest of gardens. Back in Cumbria, the auricula theatre was given a contemporary interpretation, with seasonal cut flowers creating an ever changing indoor display.

These achievements are the latest chapter in Cumbria's long horticultural tradition. For more than a century, the county's landscapes, gardens and growers have influenced planting and garden design, earning a reputation that extends far beyond the Lake District.

Auriculas at Summerdale Garden Nursery

The gold medal winning auricula exhibit at Chelsea was the culmination of almost 20 years of work by Gail and David Sheals of Summerdale Garden Nursery near Carnforth.

Both worked in medicine when they began propagating plants in the garden of their home, originally to fill the borders after spending much of their budget restoring the long empty property. Selling surplus plants during National Garden Scheme open days gradually developed into a specialist nursery, with their daughter Abi later joining the business and taking the plants to flower shows across the country.

The family won an RHS Gold Medal at Chelsea in 2017 with a display of shade loving plants, but behind the scenes they had quietly assembled an outstanding collection of auriculas. Gail's fascination began with just four unnamed plants. When Abi later gave her several named varieties, what started as a handful of flowers gradually grew into a collection of hundreds. Many of today's finest auriculas have been bred by dedicated enthusiasts rather than commercial nurseries.  New cultivars however, only receive an official name after winning an award.

Although often regarded as specialist plants, Gail says auriculas are surprisingly easy to grow, provided they are protected from the hottest sunshine and not overwatered.

When they returned to Chelsea this year, Gail and David chose to celebrate not only the plants, but also the place where they had been grown. Rather than creating an imagined setting, the family based their display on their own home. A miniature version of their house in Cumbria formed the centrepiece, while the cream backdrop reflected its walls and four grey auricula theatres echoed the colour of the front door. Tiers of slate and gravel captured the character of the garden where the collection has been nurtured over many years.

It was the first dedicated auricula display at Chelsea for over ten years, and its Gold Medal helped introduce a new generation of gardeners to one of Britain's most distinctive spring flowers.

Adding to their Chelsea success, Gail and David have recently been awarded National Collection status for their assembly of Primula auricula cultivars. The accolade recognises the quality and significance of one of the country's finest auricula collections, and further establishes Summerdale Garden Nursery as one of Britain's leading centres for these remarkable flowers.

Wisteria – Brantwood and Cumbria Wisteria

The wisteria display at Chelsea was a collaboration between Simone Daye of Brantwood House, Coniston, and Fiona Butcher of Cumbria Wisteria, brought together through their shared Plant Heritage Collection. Plant Heritage's national scheme helps safeguard important cultivated plants for the future, making the partnership both a celebration of horticulture and an important contribution to plant conservation.

Fiona's fascination with wisteria began decades earlier after she noticed one growing opposite her mother-in-law's house, and decided she wanted one of her own. Around the same time, in the early 1990s, she saw a magazine photograph of a bonsai wisteria that captured her imagination and set her on a path that would shape the next three decades of careful plant observation, experimentation and patience.

She successfully propagated the wisteria from near her mother-in-law's home and, with no permanent garden of her own, grew her early collection in pots so it could move with her. Over the years she refined her techniques through observation, trial and error, gradually discovering how to manage the plants' vigour while encouraging reliable flowering.

As her knowledge grew, so too did the collection. The arrival of the internet in the late 1990s opened up new opportunities for research, and from around the year 2000 Fiona began collecting more widely. When she eventually bought her own home, some of the wisterias were planted in the ground, although much of the collection remains container grown to this day.

In 2016 Fiona was recognised as a National Collection holder for Wisteria, confirming the significance of what had grown from a personal fascination into one of the country's most important collections.

As the collection expanded to around 70 plants, space became increasingly limited. Looking for a way to secure its future, Fiona began working with Brantwood, where around 20 plants were transferred to establish a second home for the collection. Further additions in 2022 and 2023 strengthened the shared planting across both sites, with Brantwood also becoming a Plant Heritage Collection Holder.

Today, Brantwood's head gardener, Simone Daye, works closely with Fiona to maintain and develop the collection. The plants are grown in a variety of ways, some are allowed to climb into surrounding trees, others are trained between posts or combined with roses to create living structures, while many continue to thrive in containers. Growing wisteria in pots allows its size and vigour to be carefully managed, making it possible to enjoy mature, flowering plants even in relatively small gardens.

The ambition to take wisteria to Chelsea grew from this partnership, with Simone and Fiona working together to bring the collection to the show. It was a collaboration that could not have succeeded in isolation, bringing together plants, horticultural expertise and careful timing.

Their aim was to capture a 'Slice of Brantwood' at Chelsea, demonstrating how well wisteria thrives in the Lake District's temperate, rainforest-like climate. Ferns, moss, slate and water reflected the distinctive character of the garden, placing the plants firmly within their Cumbrian setting. Brantwood, the former Lake District home of the Victorian writer, artist, art critic and social thinker John Ruskin, provided both the inspiration and the setting for the design.

No dedicated wisteria display had appeared at Chelsea for nearly 15 years, making its return particularly significant. The challenge lay not only in showing the plants but in controlling their flowering so that they reached their peak at precisely the right moment for the show.

The display recreated elements of Brantwood's landscape, incorporating a pond, moss-covered walls, ferns, acers and Ruskin's bench, complete with his hat resting on it. A traditional slate wall, built on site by Cumbrian stonemason Joe Evans, created an authentic backdrop for the plant collection.

Many visitors to the flower show were surprised to discover that wisteria can be grown successfully in pots, something Fiona has spent decades demonstrating through careful pruning, feeding and management. Her own small garden also contains an exceptional collection of bonsai, reflecting the same patience, skill and attention to detail that underpin the wider wisteria collection now shared with Brantwood.

The Gold Medal recognised not only the quality of the display, but more than 30 years of dedication to understanding one of Britain's best loved flowering climbers. It also demonstrated that, with the right care and pruning, wisteria need not be confined to large country houses, but it can bring spectacular displays to gardens of almost any size.

Auricula Reimagined – Langdale Chase

The Gold Medals may be new, but the idea of taking Cumbrian horticulture onto a wider stage has much deeper roots. More than a century before today's growers arrived at Chelsea, the Lake District was already shaping ideas about gardens and landscape through figures like John Ruskin, of Brantwood, and Thomas Mawson, one of Britain's leading landscape architects who designed some of the most prestigious Lakeland gardens back in the late 1800s. This year, some of that tradition travelled to Chelsea, while another expression of it remained rooted in the landscape that inspired it inside the Langdale Chase Hotel.

Both wisteria and an auricula theatre feature prominently as part of the restoration of the hotel's historic Thomas Mawson designed gardens. At the heart of the reception is a reimagined auricula theatre, not a traditional horticultural display, but a changing arrangement of small vases filled with flowers and foliage gathered daily from the gardens. Like the award winning exhibits at Chelsea, it celebrates the beauty of individual plants, inviting guests to appreciate their colour, scent, texture and form at close quarters before discovering them in their natural setting.

The display changes with the seasons, from winter seedheads and spring bulbs to summer perennials and autumn foliage. Each week, the gardening team selects material during walks through the hotel grounds, creating a living snapshot of the gardens at that particular moment. The small scale arrangement becomes a gateway to the gardens beyond, encouraging visitors to venture out and experience the landscape themselves rather than simply viewing it as a sweeping panorama from inside the hotel.

That same philosophy extends outdoors. A mature Wisteria, planted as part of the original lakeside gardens, remains one of the defining features of the estate. Carefully pruned to encourage repeat flowering throughout the summer, it provides a direct link between the historic planting and the ongoing restoration work taking place today. Head gardener Claire Farrington is now an integral part of that process, helping to create a destination garden where planting is closely connected to the life of the hotel and its guests.

is a sense of continuity between past and present at Langdale Chase and across the wider landscape of Cumbria. From Ruskin's explorations of nature and landscape at Brantwood, to Mawson's internationally influential designs, and from the restoration of the hotel's historic gardens to this year's Gold Medal winning exhibits at Chelsea, the same principles remain, careful observation, craftsmanship and a deep understanding of place.

For many years now Cumbria has been exporting not simply plants, but ideas and the belief that gardens of lasting significance are created through patience, knowledge and a close relationship with nature. The auriculas and wisterias that captivated Chelsea and Langdale are the latest expression of that enduring legacy, showing that even the smallest plants can carry a much larger story.

Guineveres Garden | Garden Writer