This year’s Chelsea Flower Show is hosting a Maltese garden that is inspired by the principles of ecological sustainability and the urgent need for action to preserve Earth’s fragile balance. Stephanie Fsadni speaks to its designers.

The Ferula communis is one of many local plants that will adorn the garden.

A 200-square-metre Maltese garden featuring monumental blocks of limestone planted with local grasses, evergreens and perennials is taking pride of place at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, being held between May 23 and 27.

“Nothing like this has been seen at Chelsea before. It will not be a ‘pretty’ garden in the traditional sense but rather an extreme case of showing how man can work with nature in the harshest of conditions and create an ecological, sustainable garden,” says James Basson, the landscape designer behind the ambitious project.

“It also promises to be architecturally dramatic with two monolithic pillars of five metres and eight metres.”

James runs the France-based award-winning company Scape Design together with his wife Helen. The couple often visits Malta and Gozo by sailboat and they love various aspects of the islands, including the rich culture and history, the honey colour of the limestone which they describe as “beautiful and stunning” but, above all, the natural flora that grows in the dry, arid land.

The designers were intrigued by a quarry in Gozo. Photos: Scape Design

Two replicas of this limestone monolith will be built at the M&G garden.

To them, Malta provides a microcosm of our planet’s plight today.

“Malta has a dense population and is a thriving economy. As one of the southern-most islands in Europe, Malta has had to face environmental issues such as desalinisation, waste disposal, composting and water run-off  earlier than most other countries as it has a harsher climate and a concentrated land mass per population. These are lessons that the rest of the world has to learn and quickly,” says Helen.

“Man is great at destroying landscapes for building works, quarries, roads and so on, yet man can also work with nature to reclaim these spaces and make them beautiful while working with the natural climate and flora.”

Sponsored by leading international asset manager M&G investments of the UK, the garden’s design was originally inspired by a quarry in Gozo, which has since been abandoned.

“We have spent approximately two months on and off visiting the islands for this project, and what struck us was that within the quarry was a deeper impermeable seam that lent itself to creating a swimming pool and there were areas where fruit trees grew – presumably from past quarry workers that planted edible plants there or that grew by accident due to discarded fruit stones,” explains James.

The Helichrysum melitensis will form part of the garden, which will be divided into different zones – from shrubland to garrigue to clifftop.

“Natural organic humus gathered in different areas of the quarry, allowing native species to take root and grow, meaning only adapted species would survive and this is what we are hoping to represent in the garden.”

The company received a lot of support from local entities. They worked with Halmann Vella, which provided them with the stone; the Gaia Foundation, from whom they bought local plants; and the Environment and Resources Authority which gave them permission to export native flora.

Botanist Stephen Mifsud, author of the site MaltaWildPlants.com, assisted them with his knowledge on the local biodiversity and taxonomy of plants which helped them understand the plant communities.

An endless list of plants unique to the islands will, in fact, feature in the garden, which will be divided into a series of zones, each with its own ecology – from shrubland to garrigue to clifftop.

“The diversity in the different ecologies found in Malta, from clifftop to garrigue and larger shrubland, is really incredible,” says Helen.

“We are using several species grown from seed and some of the endemic species such as Euphorbia melitense, Hyoseris frutescens, Cheirolophus crassifolius, Limonium melitense, which we have purchased from the Gaia Foundation.”

The garden will be dominated by patches of bright green and yellow.

“We wish to create that first flush of spring in Malta, when everything turns green, and the Euphorbias and Ferulas are in flower,” continues James. “Bright green and yellow will be the dominant colours, with touches of other colours from other flowering native plants. Some plants have had last year’s growth left on them to demonstrate the reality of their conditions.”

Another local plant to be featured in the garden, the Matthiola incana melitensis.

James and Helen are eager to see their garden, which has been in the making for two years, complete. Their deadline is next Saturday as the  judging will take place on Sunday. The following day, the Chelsea Flower Show will be open to the press and the royal family, and on May 23 and 24 to the members of the Royal Horticultural Society. The public may visit the show between May 25 and 27.

“We are incredibly excited about creating this garden, it is a huge collaboration of hard work from people from Malta, Italy, Spain, France and the UK and it took over two years to bring the project to fruition. We hope we do Malta proud in showing the diversity and beauty of this magical island,” the couple says.

For more information about the Chelsea Flower Show, visit www.rhs.org.uk/shows-events/rhs-chelsea-flower-show. You will also find instructions on how to create a Malta-themed garden at home.

Scape Design is based in the south of France and specialises in Mediterranean dry landscapes, working on projects that require no irrigation and that will reach a sustainable equilibrium with minimal maintenance. Most of the company’s projects are in France but they also consult in Italy, Spain, Sicily and the UK. Scape Design has already participated and won numerous awards in past editions of the Chelsea Flower Show (2012, 2013, 2015, 2016); the Gardening World Cup in Japan (2012, 2013); the Singapore Garden Festival (2014, 2016); the Philadelphia Flower Show (2015); the Radicepura Garden Festival in Sicily (2017) and the Festival des Jardins de la Cote D’Azur.

www.scapedesign.com