CHELSEA Flower Show, the quintessential start to the English summer, with ladies in gauzy frocks, chaps in panamas or boaters, sipping Pimms and nibbling on smoked salmon sandwiches in the setting of the wonderful grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea on the banks of the River Thames. Sounds idyllic, doesn’t it? The reality is somewhat different.
I haven’t been to Chelsea for a few years and when the BBC pulled the plug on Sky TV last year right in the middle of the Chelsea Flower Show broadcasts, I vowed that I would go this year. As a member of the Royal Horticultural Society, I am entitled to buy two tickets for either of the Members Only Days, the first and second days of the Show, which are by far the best days to visit when everything is fresh and blooming beautifully The general public are admitted after these days. The logistics of getting there meant it was a rather expensive day trip but that’s a minor detail.
Off on the red-eye to Heathrow, tube to Victoria and the waiting began, as there was a rather long queue to board the special buses, which ferried us the short journey to the show grounds. (If there were a next time, I would just take a taxi). We were dropped at the main entrance, which had been closed because of the crush and the delay in searching everyone’s bags, and so had to walk the mile or so past ticket touts, wanting any spare tickets, to the Bull Ring Gate facing the Thames, where we queued again to have our hologrammed tickets checked and our bags searched. People I talked to later complained that they had waited for over an hour to get inside. Perhaps we were lucky after all.
Then we were inside and the beauty of Chelsea unfolded. There is a buzz at flower shows and after all the hype of TV programmes and newspaper articles about certain celebrity gardeners’ spats, at last one could see what all the fuss was about. There were Show Gardens, Small Gardens, Chic, City and Courtyard gardens all echoing what seemed to be this year’s theme of conservation and attracting wild flora and fauna. It was difficult to see them to the best advantage as the crowds were six or seven deep most of the time and photo opportunities were few and far between as the public were nudged out by TV camera men and local radio commentators. Someone behind me commented that she would see more of the show at home on her TV!
My favourite garden was the one created by Bunny Guinness to celebrate the 175-year anniversary of the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race. Set among cloistered gardens similar to those of both universities and beset with upturned oars and other paraphernalia connected with the race, it was beautifully planted in a very cool sympathetic way. I loved it – it looked so restful and calm. Blue irises predominated as they did throughout the show exhibits. Next to this lovely garden was the much hyped garden of the Irish gardener, Diarmuid Gavin, with his masses of ping pong balls on sticks in garish hues which I would not have anywhere near a garden of mine.
The Salvation Army had a charming garden in colours of black, purple and red (their colours) to signify darkness and gold, silver and white to signify light. This garden was well planted up with a wonderful choice of plants.
My second favourite was The Haddonstone Knot Garden, maybe because I have been making a similar style garden here in Cyprus. Again it was cool and well planted and would have been a wonderful place to sit, relax and think. I really don’t think that people want their gardens to shout at them like Gavin’s however avant-garde they are, rather to be a place of quietness and enjoyment. Australia and New Zealand were there in force planted with native plants from their own countries, while inside the Great Pavilion, which has taken the place of the marquees for which Chelsea was renown, display gardens from Trinidad and Tobago blazed their vibrant colours across the aisles. There were entries from Barbados, The Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens in South Africa and even participants in the Floral Art Section from as far away as Hong Kong.
There was something for everyone, no matter which plant is top of your favourite list. Orchids, in abundance, looking as if they had just been painted that morning; Bonsai older than most of us there; Pelargoniums of such colour and shape you couldn’t imagine, with a new pretty pink hanging variety called ‘Patricia’; lilies whose perfume dominated the pavilion; peonies looking like ballerinas in tutus; old fashioned roses scrambling over terraces and the green coolness of topiary gardens. I kept looking around to see what there was for us to grow in Cyprus but because this is a spring show lots of the plants were of the soft English spring variety, which of course have all gone over here with our heat. However — there were irises everywhere and those we can grow here! I have never seen such gorgeous displays as those by Kelways, famous iris and peony growers in the UK and when I asked if they would export to Cyprus, there was an affirmative answer. Asking another grower if they would send some Eremurus to Cyprus as we are now in Europe, he thought that we had recently voted no to being in the EU. We put him right! This firm sends out plants with a ‘plant passport’, which should be acceptable to our Ministry of Agriculture. I will find out more about plant importation in these new circumstances and let you know later.
The peripherals were plentiful, where you could buy anything from welly boots to garden furniture and ‘sitooterie’; planters to plant ties and seeds to sundries with the best sellers, luminescent dragonflies hovering above the plantings and pools. I succumbed to two of those.
So what was my overall impression of Chelsea 2004, forgetting the time and travel?
Chelsea is a showcase for plants. New varieties are launched amid great pomp and ceremony and the displays are lovely but I have seen displays in provincial flower shows with standards as high if not higher than those I saw this week. The crowds were huge, making it very uncomfortable and only the lucky few managed to get a seat to listen to the red-coated bandsmen for the lunchtime picnic, as they played in a wonderful woodland setting with the local blackbirds as soloists. Bearing in mind the ages of the members attending, this was a dreadful oversight. And, you could smell the ladies toilets before you reached them.
Will I go back? Not for a day trip, I think.
NEXT WEEK: Plant of the month, nasty plants and questions and answers
