Ursula Buchan

Chelsea challenge

As you make your sandwiches and get out your comfortable shoes ready for a day at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show next week (24–29 May), do spare a thought for the 600 exhibitors of show gardens, plants, floral arrangements, educational exhibits and sundries.

issue 22 May 2010

As you make your sandwiches and get out your comfortable shoes ready for a day at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show next week (24–29 May), do spare a thought for the 600 exhibitors of show gardens, plants, floral arrangements, educational exhibits and sundries.

As you make your sandwiches and get out your comfortable shoes ready for a day at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show next week (24–29 May), do spare a thought for the 600 exhibitors of show gardens, plants, floral arrangements, educational exhibits and sundries. Theirs is not an especially happy lot.

This year’s cold and dry late-April and May with frosts at night have forced designers of show gardens to scrabble for substitute plants, while nurserymen, with exhibits in the Great Pavilion, have a more than usually worrying time getting the plants to the right stage for showing.

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