Tag Archives: Chelsea Flower Show

The Chelsea Flower Show on a Rainy Wednesday – Part 2 – The Exhibits & Great Pavilion

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My last blog took a tour around some of the big gardens at Chelsea 2024, but of course there is much more to the show. Lining the avenues throughout the grounds are booths of varying sizes showcasing art, clothing, garden furnishings, tools, pots and planters, house plants, etc. while inside the Great Pavilion are nurseries and plant societies, floral designers and ecological/scientific displays. Let’s start with the spectacular floral acronym for the Royal Horticultural Society, as interpreted in UK-grown peonies by the upscale floral designer Pinstripes & Peonies.

Here is a small bit of the letter “S”. Imagine how much work it took to condition all those peonies and then insert them into the matrix using “eco-friendly principles”….. which I assume must mean floral-oasis-free, though I wasn’t able to confirm that.

Artists have long been a part of Chelsea, which is now in its 111th year. The best show off their works in small gardens, like Scots sculptor James Parker below. who chose rodgersia, Siberian iris and foxglove to complement his stacked slate and bronze pinecone sculptures.

David Harber Sculpture was nestled in a leafy setting as well.

The Clancy Workshop took a more lighthearted approach at Chelsea. Architect/artist Mike Clancy positions his sculptures, like these animals, between art and architecture using traditional and digital techniques.

I’ve taken the odd stroll through Harrod’s in London but I wasn’t aware there is also Harrod Horticultural – unrelated to the department store, but obviously benefiting at the show from the similarity in names.  Its horticultural line is an offshoot of its business as a long-time supplier of sport goalposts – including to the Olympics!

Garden buildings come in all shapes and sizes in England, and those displayed by Scotts of Shrapston, celebrating its 60th anniversary, seemed quite modest.

But it was the lovely landscaping around their shed that I loved featuring Siberian iris and an unusual umbellifer, Baltic parsley (Cenolothium denudatum).

At Garden Art Plus Limited, this 18th century French limestone trough with lion’s paws feet and mossy patina could be had for the trifling sum of £12,500.

Solus Decor started in “a humble single car garage in 1998” in Vancouver, B.C. where they now have an 18,000 sq ft location, and expanded to four locations worldwide from which they export to 35 countries. They make fire pits, fire tables and fire bowls, and if those get too… fiery…

…. they also have compact water fountains.   

As the rain increased, it was a pleasure to wander into the Great Pavilion where Pheasant Acre Plants were showing off their gladioli.

Barbados Horticultural Society displayed fabulous floral designs featuring warm-coloured tropical plants.

Moore & Moore Plants are woodland specialists and their exhibit was a lush celebration of ferns and flowering shade-lovers.  

I was enchanted with the stunning display of plant treasures by Kevock Garden Plants of Scotland, including many beautiful meconopsis species….

….. such as the rare, red M. staintonii.

Look at all those primulas!

The display was designed by Monica Wylie and I asked her to pose for me for this blog.

And what a serendipitous delight to find my Seattle ‘horty’ friend Sue Nevler and her husband Steve Gatti admiring the Kevock exhibit.  After hugs and introductions all round, Sue & I posed with Kevock’s owner David Rankin – with Himalayan poppies posing above us!  We were heading on to Tuscany to see our youngest son and Sue and Steve were heading to Malta, then France.

Grow just two things, but grow them very well. That could be the motto of Blackmore & Langdon’s, with their luscious begonias and delphiniums. And I swear I made the identical photo 32 years ago, when I was last at the Chelsea!

The Botanic Nursery in Wiltshire holds the National Collection of foxgloves, and it shows.

This delicate foxglove is Digitalis ‘Apple Blossom’.  

W.S. Warmenhoven displayed a trove of Amaryllis and Alliums in the pavilion. A family company established in the Netherlands in 1885, they grow  55 varieties of allium, something like a million bulbs in their fields and greenhouses. There, they sell the blooms as cut flowers at the Dutch Flower Auction and harvest the bulbs for their bulb business.

I’ve never grown Allium schubertii with its big, low-growing, starry globes, but I liked ‘Arctic Snow’.

Allium macleanii is a parent of  ‘Globemaster’ and I was delighted to photograph it. I wish I could source this one in Canada, because I find the other parent, A. cristophii or star-of-Persia attracts bees but ‘Globemaster’ doesn’t, presumably sterile and also not a big nectar producer. One of my reasons for growing alliums is their great attraction to bees.

Peter Beales Roses featured a tribute to the 200th anniversary of the Royal Navy Liveboat Institution (RNLI) in their exhibit, incorporating a small inshore lifeboat.and a splash of their commemorative apricot floribunda rose 200th With Courage at right.  

Not to be outdone, Harkness Roses introduced their ‘Chelsea Pensioner’ rose, which I asked this Pensioner to pose beside. For every bush sold, Harkness donates £2.50 to the care of the Chelsea Pensioners and their home.

Jacques Amand had two side-by-side exhibits displaying a large range of perennials, bulbs and small trees – and they won two Chelsea Gold Medals for their efforts.

Caley Brothers sells edible and medicinal mushrooms and wanted their Chelsea display “to inspire visitors to get growing their own delicious mushrooms through a series of easy to grow projects. Regardless of space, budget or season,” they say they have a mushroom project to suit every gardener – and have written their own book called “Project Mushroom”.   

Hampshire Carnivorous Plants is the UK’s largest grower of carnivorous plants. They had a colourful display featuring loads of pitcher plants (Sarracenia spp.) and maidenhair ferns and a Jurassic dinosaur. They also sell nepenthes, Venus flytraps (Dionaea muscipula) and sundews (Drosera); the latter at least, have been traced to the Jurassic Age.

What insect could resist the alluring pitchers of Sarracenia ‘Juthatip Soper’? 

We played along, not very convincingly, since we all know dinosaurs are herbivores, right? 

Driftwood Bonsai had a handsome display along the wall of the pavilion.

On the far wall, Kelnan Plants featured a lush display of South African natives, included many Resionaceae species.

As we were leaving to head to a pub lunch, I spied a visitor preparing to try on a garment at Original Fibres. It produces 100% European wool and linen clothing for men – I loved their springy planter design.

And I confess, I sneaked a photo of what might be the most beautiful garment I saw at the Chelsea on this rainy May Wednesday. But a little online detective work let me know that, sadly, I need to upgrade my shopping experience to Dolce & Gabbana. Because who wouldn’t want to stay dry under raindrops on spectacular wisteria blossoms?

And that’s a Chelsea wrap. I missed about one-third of the show, thanks to Mother Nature, jet lag and basic energy level, but I had a truly wonderful morning and sparked a little horticultural fire in my younger menfolk!  Stay tuned for future blogs on the Chelsea Physic Garden, the Garden Museum and the fabulous Moat in Bloom at London Bridge.

The Chelsea Flower Show on a Rainy Wednesday – Part 1 – The Gardens

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As gardeners, if we’re not complaining about drought we’re moaning about rain. But at the Chelsea on a rainy May day, the moaning only lasts a short while, so beautiful are the gardens. And who doesn’t want to pose with an umbrella beside a tower of flowers?

It was even more special because our London-based eldest son Doug, rear, and his partner Tommy were our guests – Chelsea novices who really enjoyed wandering the show.  In fact, the last time we attended the Chelsea was in 1992 when Doug was at Cambridge; thirty-two years later it was even more spectacular.

The rain was on-and-off but the crowds were thick around the show gardens, so I missed a few, including, alas, the Gold Winner – but there was lots to see on the 66-acre site including smaller garden installations and some 500 booths and exhibits, many under cover in the Great Pavilion.

Exhibitors like The Plant School from Northamptonshire, below, take special care, naturally, to design their booth around beautiful plants.

I loved this display from The Delphinium Society offering good ideas for plants to pair with delphiniums.

Tom Stuart-Smith’s garden for the National Garden Scheme was a cool, romantic, woodland-edge vision in white. According to the designer, the garden exemplified the “joy and associated health and wellbeing benefits of garden visiting that have been at the heart of the National Garden Scheme since 1927.” It was part of the project ‘Giving Back’ and following the show was slated to be relocated to a hospital in Cambridge where it will be sited at a Maggie’s Centre for people having treatment for cancer. The shed in the background was designed by architect Ben Stuart-Smith, Tom’s son, and created by woodworker Fenton Scott-Fielder.  Many of the plants were donated by National Garden Scheme owners. The white azalea is Rhododendron ‘Daviesii’.

The Octavia Hill Garden celebrated the social reformer and co-founder of the National Trust in 1894, Octavia Hill (1838-1912) who worked throughout her life to improve urban housing (she was the landlord of 3,000 tenancies) and protect green space. Interestingly it was Hill who coined the term “the green belt”, intending it to mean green space for the use of people, rather than a purely environmental concept. The Chelsea garden was designed by Ann-Marie Powell Gardens for garden centre retail group Blue Diamond and the National Trust and won a Silver-Gilt medal.  It was conceptualized as “a community urban wildlife garden” occupying “a series of open-air sitting rooms” in an urban brownfield and featured a warm-colour plant palette that was enhanced by the ochre-hued sandstone hardscape.  The sound of splashing water could be heard…. above the Chelsea rain.

Someone beside me asked what the spherical yellow flowers were and I said Craspedia or “billy buttons”, an excellent flower for arrangements and for drying.

The National Autistic Society Garden by Sophie Parmenter and Dido Milne tells the story of “autistic masking”. It was designed as an environment in which ‘masking’ – a conscious and subconscious coping strategy for dealing with a loud, overwhelming world – becomes possible, a way for autistic people to experience the beauty and sound of nature comfortably but fully. These candelabra primulas were in the garden’s ‘mossy dell’.

This video explains more about the Silver-Gilt-winning garden.

Designer Robert Myers called the garden below ‘St. James’s Piccadilly: Imagine the World to be Different’.  Reminiscent of the churchyard in the title, it is a contemplative haven set as sanctuary for city-dwellers and wildlife.  It “celebrates the significance of urban ‘pocket parks’ in London and other cities, often connected with historic churchyards, some bearing the scars of wartime bombing yet refusing to yield to destruction.”  The building is a “counselling cabin” like those used by the clergy.  The garden also contains seven species of plants that appeared in the ruins of St. James’s after wartime bombings, reminding visitors of nature’s resilience. Once the Chelsea ends, the plants will find a new home at St. Pancras Euston Road and the counselling cabin and other hardscaping will be installed in the restored garden in Piccadilly.   

The colourful RHS ‘No Adults Allowed Garden’ was designed by kids, for kids – specifically the students of the Sulivan Primary School in Fulham who will help in its transfer to their own school grounds after the show. And naturally, children love carnivorous plants!

The Chelsea Flower Show sponsor The Newt in Somerset (which I blogged about this January after visiting in 2023) commissioned ‘A Roman Garden’ with a formal courtyard filled with flowers and statuary.  Imagined in Pompeii in the 1st century CE, it is a colonnaded courtyard with a peristyle garden featuring 1,600 plants of 13 different varieties with a mulberry in the centre and medicinal plants such as chamomile, lavender, opium poppy and thyme.

Royal Hospital Way flanks the Royal Chelsea Hospital grounds, below. The word “hospital” refers to the ancient definition as an almshouse, rather than a medical facility. Founded in 1682 by King Charles II, it is an Old Soldiers’ retirement and nursing home for 300 veterans of the British Army and is run as an independent charity. Chelsea Pensioners in their ceremonial scarlet uniforms are a fixture at the show, as you’ll see in my next blog.

Gardens along Royal Hospital Way were themed as Sanctuary Gardens. The romantic space below inspired by the television series of the same name was The Bridgerton Garden, designed by Holly Johnson. On opening day, some of the show’s stars were in attendance – or so I read in gossip from Lady Whistledown herself!  And, spoiler alert, the garden is meant to reflect Penelope Featherington, “the central character of Bridgerton season 3 and her journey from being a wallflower to embracing her true self and stepping into the light.”

Who doesn’t love lupines in late May?  They were all over the Chelsea grounds but this variety, Lupinus ‘Masterpiece’ in the Bridgerton Garden, combined with campanulas, foxgloves and irises, captured visitors’ hearts. 

Next up was The Burma Skincare Initiative (BSI) Spirit of Partnership Garden, designed by Helen Olney, which won the Gold Medal in the Sanctuary Gardens.  BSI is a registered charity co-founded by London-based dermatologists, Su Lwin and Chris Griffiths in 2019 with the vision of creating equal access to quality skincare for the people of Myanmar. When Lwin and Griffiths visited the 2021 RHS Chelsea Flower Show, they were impressed by the global publicity that could be achieved for the charity by showcasing its work through the narrative of a Chelsea Garden.  The building at the top is an interpretation of a 14th century Burmese stupa, representing the challenging environment in which the BSI operates in strife-torn Myanmar.  

My favourite garden came next, ‘MOROTO no IE’ by Kazuyuki Ishihara, a Chelsea Flower Show veteran since 2006 and frequent Gold award-winner.  Born in Nagasaki-city, after he graduated from university, “he started to study the ‘Ikenobo’ style of Ikebana (Japanese flower arrangement with a long tradition), and his eyes were opened to the world of flowers. When he was 29, he started selling flowers on the street, inspired by the flower shops of Paris. Through floristry, he built up his artistic talent. In 1995 he created his own company, Kazahana Co. Ltd.”  Japanese maples and moss hummocks created a serene, green setting where the sound of water splashing from the central waterfall seemed to calm the hectic scene that is Chelsea. The Japanese concept of the ‘stroll garden’ was very much in display here – if only I could have jumped the barricade and…. strolled.

As with many Japanese gardens, colour was limited to mainly green, but the Siberian iris ‘Tropic Night’ added a sensuous note to the rocky water garden.

A stunning moss living wall on the garden’s exterior contained just one decorative touch, a small, wild-bee haven.

As I stood admiring it, a visitor asked if I wanted my photo at the moss wall. I said yes, and later thought about what I brought from Canada specifically to wear at the Chelsea, an old April Cornell flowered smock that I’d worn in the March 27, 1994 photo announcing my first garden column in a weekly series I would write for six years for the Toronto Sun. Thirty years? Not bad for a favourite garment.

‘Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees’, but trees do offer sanctuary, as was clear in this garden designed by Baz Grainger of Landform Consultants for wealth management firm Killik & Co. And in a fiduciary play on words, the garden’s ethos was described as “Saving: four oak planters represent our four main drivers to start saving and the oak indicating the importance of choosing a reliable and enduring savings partner, Planning: six structural stone pillars and six steel pergola crossbeams represent six key reasons to plan for the future. Investing: five trees represent five core investment goals.”  

I felt the need to do research on The Freedom from Torture Garden: a Sanctuary for Survivors, a garden designed by John Warland and Emma O’Connell. A charity, Freedom from Torture was established in 1985 as an offshoot of Amnesty International. In 2016, its five centres received 1,066 referrals for individuals from 76 countries including Sri Lanka, Iran, Afghanistan, Nigeria, DR Congo, Turkey, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria and Sudan. Virtually all clients are asylum seekers or refugees who have fled torture and persecution in their home countries. The centres involve horticultural therapy so the garden is a meaningful expression and, as part of the project Giving Back, the garden will be rebuilt at Freedom From Torture Headquarters at Finsbury Park, London.  I was very taken with these organic-shaped willow structures in a dry part of the garden.

A sunken communal seating space will allow survivors to sit together and share stories. In fact, those in FFT’s gardening group told their stories as research for the garden, which will grow edible and medicinal produce for harvest by those in the therapy programs. 

I didn’t get past the crowds to look at the Flood Re Garden, but while gazing through its side panel , I suddenly became aware of a man sitting in the foliage in front of me. He was talking about the power of certain plants to adapt to flooding – and I realized he was on camera. When I asked an attendant nearby, they told me he was James Wong of Gardener’s World, filming a segment for the show.

So it was fun to find the segment at 11:08 on this episode of Gardener’s World at the Chelsea and see what he looked like from the front!  I made a little screen grab below.

The World Child Cancer Nurturing Garden  designed by Giulio Giorgi was the RHS Environmental Innovation Award winner. It featured curvilinear raised beds made from perforated terracotta blocks planted with soft-touch plants, fragrant herbs, vibrant mosses and edible plants.  “Supporting emotional wellbeing, a child and a parent can stroll through the reclaimed brick path, which leads to scenic meadow surrounded by tall trees, perennials, annuals, and shrubs. At its heart lies a seating area, which is a restful place for children and their loved ones”.

The final garden in my collection is the Boodles Garden celebrating the 200th anniversary of the National Gallery. Taking inspiration from paintings at the gallery, it evokes the spirit of many significant artworks. The creative vision for the design takes from artistic elements, including colours, textures and ‘hidden details’ in paintings viewed during visits to the gallery. The sculptural arches are inspired by Canaletto and Claude’s element of repetition and perspective; water features define the space while reflecting the work of Renoir, Monet and Seurat; and the primarily-green garden plantings themselves “represent the artist’s brushstrokes and texture within pointillist and impressionist paintings”.

My great regret was missing the Gold Award-winning Water-Aid Garden by Tom Massey and Je Ahn celebrating rainwater harvesting. This video gives a sense of the designers’ intent.

My next blog will focus on the Chelsea Flower Show booths and the Grand Pavilion.