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Prince tipped to win best garden prize at Chelsea(Electronic Telegraph)
By Jenny Booth
PRINCE CHARLES is being tipped to win the prize for the best garden at this year's Chelsea Flower Show, with his design for an Arabic-influenced Carpet Garden.
The Prince drew on his interest in Islamic culture to make the basic sketches for the garden which was inspired by the geometric patterns on Middle Eastern rugs at Highgrove House, his country home in Gloucestershire. Colourful flowering plants such as roses, delphiniums and berberis, all found in early Islamic gardens, have been used to replicate the carpets' design.
At the centre is a mosaic-tiled octagonal platform with a circular fountain, made by a Moorish craftsman in Granada, Spain, which will be installed at Highgrove once the show ends. Water trickles down four irrigation channels to the corners of the garden in the manner of the gardens of the Alhambra palace in Granada.
Security was tight this weekend, as designers and contractors worked frantically to complete their gardens, but there was praise for the Prince's entry. "The garden drawn by HRH is looking particularly nice," said a Royal Horticultural Society spokesman.
It is the first time a member of the Royal Family has designed an entry for Chelsea. The Prince faces stiff competition from the other show gardens, even though the number of entries, 16, is well down from the record levels in millennium year.
At the site, near the Royal Chelsea Hospital in London, the garden contractors are working against the clock today to put the finishing touches to the entries before tomorrow afternoon's visit by the Queen and Queen Mother, the show's patrons, which marks the unofficial opening.
Another well-fancied entry is the scale model of Cornwall's Eden Project, designed and built by inmates from Leyhill Open Prison. The prisoners have planted a tropical rainforest, complete with orchids and banana trees, housed in a glass dome on their plot.
The edges have been terraced to resemble the sides of a quarry, planted with coffee and tobacco and melons, and a large waterfall cascades down the back of the dome throwing up a jungle-like mist.
Show organisers have given the Garden of Eden entry a double-sized plot measuring 27.5 square yards, making it the largest garden ever shown at Chelsea. An RHS spokesman said the result was "very ambitious and absolutely stunning".
The Leyhill prisoners will be hoping to go one better than last year, when they were awarded a gold medal, for attaining the highest standards of gardening, but failed to win the overall prize, which went to two Dutch designers for an entry called Evolution that was sponsored by Gardens Illustrated.
A wild meadow garden, jointly sponsored by Laurent Perrier, the champagne house, and Harpers & Queen magazine, has also been drawing admiring comments. Long grasses and drifts of tall flowering plants part to reveal a water trough used as a champagne cooler.
The number of plants being flown in from abroad has raised eyebrows, with one in three entries rumoured to be making use of imported flora. Six 30ft sculpted palm trees have been flown from Abu Dhabi to provide shade for Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan's Garden of Tranquility.
Several show gardens have a quirky theme, including the Circ Contemporary Man's Garden which is inspired by male baldness. Carole Vincent's Blue Circle Garden incorporates six tons of coloured cement moulded into 7ft cones and wave forms, with plants in a vibrant colour scheme from lime green to magenta.
On a more classic note, The Daily Telegraph has teamed up with Prof Masao Fukuhara to produce A Real Japanese Garden, contoured with miniature mountains and a sea of white gravel, and incorporating a traditional Sukiya style pavilion for the tea ceremony.
The investment bank Merrill Lynch has produced a Garden for Learning. Merrill Lynch has signed a four year sponsorship deal with Chelsea Flower Show, the first time the show has ever had an official sponsor.
Television coverage starts today, with a preview hosted by Alan Titchmarsh. Members of the RHS attend on Tuesday and Wednesday, and the show opens to the public on Thursday and Friday. Organisers said last night that there were still some tickets available. The show finishes at 4.30pm on Friday with the traditional free-for-all as the exhibits are sold off.