Monday 19th
May saw me foresaking bosky Devon for the Big Smoke and the pampered perfection
of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, having been invited to attend ‘Press Day’ as my
prize for being a finalist in the 2013 RHS Blog Competition (thanks again to everyone who voted for The
Freerange Gardener!). Clutching my coveted press pass and suitably colourful
lime and magenta bar-coded wristband, I made it through the Royal Hospital
gates just after 7am and straight away sensed the difference to the ordinary Members’
Days that I have experienced in previous years. In place of the terribly polite
but still madding crowd were space and tranquility, with the shutters firmly
closed on most of the commercial stalls, and Main Avenue all but deserted; just
a handful of professional photographers working away quietly to capture the show
gardens in the soft sunlight peeking through the backdrop of plane trees. But
looking a little closer, I soon realised that this apparent air of calm was a
thin veneer, barely concealing a sense of rising tension, bordering on
controlled panic. With judging of the Show Gardens about to commence, no
opportunity was being missed to primp-to-a-peak each finely honed confection.
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Titivating Astilboides leaves to remove any wayward specks |
Look here and yes, there really is somebody with a paint brush dusting each
individual leaf of those Astilboides.
Look there and is that a pair of tweezers I spy? In the Great Pavilion, cans of
leafshine (+25% Extra Free!) are being
wielded to buck up recalcitrant peonies and, goodness, there’s a bloke
sledgehammering something next to the Jacques Amand International stand; let’s hope
it’s not the competition. Back outside, there’s a guy crawling backwards on his
hands and knees in the ‘Positively Stoke’ (as in Stoke-on-Trent) garden
applying a final polish to the raised walkway (from which an RHS judge
was later to step backwards, creating a bespoke water feature in the process). Everyone
is in socks or wearing disposable operating-theatre ‘bootees’ for fear of
scuffing a surface or squishing a leaf.
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A last-minute polish of the walkway – 'Positively Stoke' |
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Buffing-up the peonies for the judges |
Then, quite suddenly,
everything stops. It’s just like Strictly really, even down to the fake tans
and false eyelashes, except here it’s landscape bark and ever such a lot of
moss. You can almost hear Tess saying “Our
designers and contractors have worked their butts off and can do no more. Judges,
it’s over to you...”. The exhausted show garden teams and Great Pavilion
exhibitors slope off to chew anything that remains of their fingernails,
possibly watching from a distance – through haunted and bloodshot eyes – the gaggles
of clipboard-toting RHS judges as they determine the award to bestow on each
garden or display.
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Judging in progress at Avon Bulbs' Gold medal-winning exhibit |
Thereafter,
things began to relax just a little, with a gradually dawning realisation that
the judging die had been cast (albeit with results embargoed until early on
Tuesday morning) and that it really was too late to change anything. It was
time to swap the neurosis and paranoia of high-end horticultural rivalry for
the neurosis and paranoia of celebrity PR. Getting the media to cover your
garden, your design studio, your nursery, your landscape contractor, and especially your sponsor, is not merely about the footling details such as
horticultural merit and aesthetic impact, it’s about who can get the best
celebrity-driven photo opportunities. Of course, many of the celebrities are
donating their time to support the various charities that depend on events like
Chelsea to publicise their good causes. In other cases, one detects an
altogether more commercial arrangement. But whatever the motivation, a scan of
the official photocall list suggests that more and more exhibitors are turning
to ever-more creative (some might say desperate) ways of shoe-horning a PR
stunt into Press Day.
It’s easy
to be cynical where ‘sleb’ culture is concerned, but there were moments of
genuine poignancy. Stephen Fry, Caroline Quentin, Rowan Atkinson and Jeremy
Paxman each read moving excerpts from First World War poetry in the ‘No Man’s
Land’ garden, in support of ABF, The Soldiers' Charity. Elsewhere, Susanna Reid and Diarmuid Gavin were
joined in the ‘First Touch’ garden by children whose lives had been saved by
the Neonatal Unit at St George’s Hospital, London.
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Jeremy Paxman in the 'No Man's Land Garden' |
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Celebrity launch of the 'First Touch' Garden |
There were
also amusing incidents: Piers Morgan being jostled and ‘nibbled’ by the
extraordinarily lifelike equine star of War Horse; a woman thrusting a
camera-phone in front of her other half and saying “Look! I met Mary Berry! Isn’t she lovely?! Shame she closed her eyes
though". And someone else struggling to put a name to a well-known actor
exclaiming “I know who it is! It’s Hyacinth’s
husband!"
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War Horse goes for Piers Morgan, egged on by Tony Blackburn and Michael Parkinson |
But amidst
all the hoopla, what were the plants and the gardens actually like? It was certainly a treat to have the luxury of space and relative peace and quiet (away from
the photo opps) to really get to grips with all of the gardens and to visit
virtually every exhibit in the Great Pavilion. Outside, one of the things that
struck me most was how each of the gardens appeared to change during the day as
the strength, quality and position of the light varied. The BrandAlley
Renaissance garden, for instance, looked frankly dull and uninspiring first
thing, when it was deep in the shadow of nearby trees. The strong afternoon
sunshine brought it to life though, giving an appropriately Mediterranean feel
and highlighting the use of strongly contrasting colours and forms. It will
never be one of my favourites among this year’s gardens, but I wonder if the
fact that judging took place in the relative gloom of the morning was one of
the reasons that this was the only large show garden to receive a Bronze medal
in 2014.
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The BrandAlley Rennaisance Garden |
As has been
mentioned often during the last few days’ press and TV coverage, a common thread
running through so many of the gardens is the use of soft, naturalistic
planting; right up my street! For example, I loved the textures and colours of a
particular combination in Matthew Childs’ Brewin Dolphin garden, which saw the
velvety rich burgundies of Lysimachia
atropurpurea ‘Beaujolais’ and Aquilegia
vulgaris var stellata cultivars ‘Black
Barlow’ and ‘Ruby Port’ underplanted with a haze of Melica altissima ‘Alba’. The seemingly popular and Gold
medal-winning Telegraph Garden was just a bit too neatly ordered and
polite for my tastes, while I would personally have upgraded to Gold a couple
of the gardens awarded Silver-Gilt by the judges, including, in the Artisan
Garden category, 'The Topiarist’s Garden', which challenged my general prejudice
against topiary.
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Naturalistic planting in the Brewin Dolphin Garden |
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The Topiarist's Garden |
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'Best in Show' Artisan Garden category: Togenkyo – A Paradise on Earth |
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The Telegraph Garden – too neat and conventional for me. |
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Planting detail from Cleve West's garden for M&G Investments |
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Planting detail from 'Positively Stoke' |
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One of the more challenging and thought-provoking of the 'Fresh Gardens' category was this time-capsule cum modern-day Ark cum gallery holding wild-collected specimens grown from seed by Crûg Farm Plants |
My personal
pick for ‘Best in Show’ among the large show gardens would have been Hugo
Bugg’s RBC Waterscape Garden, subtitled ‘Embrace the Rain’. From the innovative
‘cracked earth’ effect concrete, to the bold lines of the hard landcaping, contrasting
softness of the sublimely composed planting, and the cleverly integrated water-conservation
features, I loved everything about this garden, which won Gold for the young
Exeter-based designer at his Chelsea debut.
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Hugo Bugg in his garden 'Embrace the Rain' |
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Planting detail from the RBC Waterscape 'Embrace the Rain' garden |
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My top wildlife sighting of the day – a Holly Blue butterfly settles next to the Massachusetts Garden |
In the
Great Pavilion there was the usual eclectic mix of stands, ranging from small,
specialist nurseries, through larger, more overtly commercial growers, to
displays promoting specific bodies and initiatives and yet others with an eye
on the international tourism market. While always admiring the skill and
dedication required to bring so many plants to their peak at just the right
time, I have to say that many of the single-genus stands tend to leave me
strangely unmoved and it can be simply overwhelming to be confronted with so
many plants of the same type all crowded together. I much prefer the mixed
displays that inspire thoughts of new planting combinations in a garden setting,
in addition to showing off the individual plants to better advantage. As ever,
the quirky, extravagant and avant-garde vied for attention with more staid and conventional
exhibits. The portrait of Nelson Mandela, formed from the dried bases of Protea flowers must rank as one of the most quietly beautiful yet
impactive displays, while the explosion of flamboyant floral art and ornate sculptures
that made up the huge ‘Thai culture and orchid extravaganza’ exhibit presented
by Pattaya City & Nong Nooch Tropical Botanical Garden was
anything but quiet. I
can’t say I go a bundle on Hydrangea macrophylla
MISS SAORI (‘H20-2’), the
RHS Chelsea 'Plant of the Year', chosen from among 20 new introductions launched
at this year’s show; too much of a sugary-sweet fantasia for me, but
that’s why they have professional selection panels for these things.
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Afternoon tea at David Austin Roses |
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Massed ranks of lavender by Downderry Nursery |
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South African National Biodiversity Institute – Kirstenbosch stand |
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Nelson Mandela's portrait, composed from dried Protea |
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How much is too much? An orchid rabbit on the Thai stand |
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Owen Patterson. Enough said. |
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Tale Valley Nursery's display of shade-tolerant plants |
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Hydrangea macrophylla MISS SAORI – RHS Chelsea 'Plant of the Year' (photo from RHS) |
So that’s
it. As I made my way to Sloane Square tube station (bumping into Gok Wan en
route, as one does) and from there back to Paddington to return to far-flung
rural parts, I reflected on the wonderful, mad, inspiring, ephemeral, eclectic-yet-so-very-British contrivance that is the Chelsea Flower Show, and in particular the parallel
universe that is Press Day. What an amazing experience; it’s just as well it
only happens once a year!
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And finally... The Laurent Perrier Garden – 'Best in Show' large garden |