EBTS at Landscape 2018
Report by Elizabeth Hilliard Selka
EBTS UK was well represented at this year’s annual trade show for garden designers and landscape architects, Landscape 2018, held in Battersea Park in London.
On Tuesday September 18th Marian Boswall chaired the panel discussion on Setting Up A Design Practice which had a distinguished line-up of speakers addressing a packed audience.
On Wednesday 19th, Caroline Foley delivered a ‘canter’ through the history of topiary, parterres and knots followed by Chris Poole’s talk on box blight and moth and how to spot and combat them. He concluded with the welcome news that Topbuxus were hoping to secured a licence to import the Trichogramma wasp which lays its eggs in box moth eggs which then eat them and stop the cycle of reproduction.
In her talk ‘Post Box – Out of the comfort zone’ Pip O’Brien ex-chair of the Society of Garden Designers, argued that boxwood should be dropped from the repertoire of plants used due to blight, box moth & because it has been used for too long!
EBTS’s response to her article in The Garden Journal obviously had some impact as she quoted parts of it in her talk.
EBTS UK member Jake Hobson also gave a talk on his personal journey in the industry, as well as selling his Niwaki brand tools on his stand.
This annual landscape show, now in its eighth year, is well worth a visit: entrance is free and this year there were around 200 stalls showing a wide variety of products and ideas. Several exhibitors specialised in architectural plants and topiary, most notably Matteini Tranquillo Piante, Europlants, Creepers nursery, and Mondi Plants whose display included an unusual and very pretty cloud-pruned Cupressus arizonica ‘Fastigiata’ . Overall, cloud pruning and bare-stemmed pruning of multi-stem shrubs were something of a trend at Landscape 2018.
