You have probably idly wondered, as you stood in a queue for the loos at Chelsea Flower Show, why the Royal Horticultural Society stages its greatest flower show of the year in the week before the Whitsun Bank Holiday. Late May is good for irises, Oriental poppies, alliums, hardy geraniums, seed-raised verbascums, lilacs, wisteria and viburnums, but it is too late for tulips and too early for roses and most summer perennials. That is why so many of the plants seen at Chelsea have either been forced into premature growth or retarded.
It becomes clear if you know that Chelsea used to be called the Great Spring Show, in the days when the RHS was mainly run by gardeners with woodland gardens on acid soils in the south and west. It was, therefore, first and foremost, a rhododendron and azalea show, with rock gardens as a subsidiary interest. You would not know that now. When Hydon Nurseries gave up showing rhododendrons ten years ago, much of that ericaceous spirit died. Once or twice since then, there have been no rhodie exhibits at all although, this year, the banner was carried by the excellent Millais Nurseries. And there were a few rhododendrons sprinkled about the show gardens, although never much to their advantage, I am afraid. As for rock gardens, modern-day concerns about the removal of rocks from the wild have permanently done for them, although D’Arcy and Everest and Hartside Nursery of Alston in Cumbria (known, rather wittily, as ‘Plants with altitude’) put on brave displays of alpines in the Great Pavilion.
This year, interestingly, show garden designers seemed quite ready to use plants which were genuinely in season. Perhaps it was because this was the Credit Munch Chelsea, with money very tight and ‘grow your own’ to the fore, or perhaps it was a flicker of recognition that show gardens aren’t much use to the visitors if the plants are forced or held back to create a strong visual impact. (Having said that, the President, Giles Coode-Adams, may have sent out the wrong signal when he awarded his prize for the best Great Pavilion exhibit to Winchester Growers for a display of dahlias — even if it is mighty clever to have August-flowering tender perennials blooming in early May.)
Much has been made of how few large show gardens there were because of the straitened circumstances: 14 rather than the usual 22. Only a few — the Daily Telegraph, Laurent-Perrier, Cancer Research UK, and Chetwood and Collins — reminded me of the old, pre-crunch, investment-bank-sponsoring days. But even these were more austere than is usual.
The shortage of large show gardens means that there was space in prominent positions, such as the Main Avenue, for first-time exhibitors designing modest-sized ‘Urban Gardens’, and here one must give credit particularly to relative youngsters Kate Gould, Mark Gregory, Paul Hensey, Angus Thompson and Jane Brockbank. These Urban Gardens were much more interesting than the Courtyard Gardens, so-called, tucked away in Ranelagh Gardens which were the usual cottagey stuff.
There was something different about the show’s atmosphere, as well. Although we were told that there was great demand for exhibition space in the Great Pavilion, there was much more space than last year for the public to move around. This was partly to do with the removal of the Lecture Theatre to a site outside, but there were also a number of exhibits, which were smaller than usual. And there were a lot of unfamiliar, but very promising, names exhibiting, such as Primrose Bank, Todd’s Botanics, Coldharbour Nursery and Pheasant Acre Plants. Altogether, it was a much more pleasant experience for the visitors, as a result. Although it won’t be quite business as usual next year, it will be something more like it. But a change is as good as…
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