Traditional virtues

You have probably forgotten about this year’s Chelsea Flower Show by now, it having segued into all the other Chelseas you have ever seen. I, however, am still, if not haunted, then certainly preoccupied by it. It wasn’t, strangely, the show gardens, nor yet the plants, so much as the people who have stayed with me this year. The financial world may be crumbling around our ears, children may no longer require fathers, civil liberties may be under threat, but the old-fashioned, traditional virtues of disinterested endeavour, selflessness and hard work were still very evident at Chelsea.

I am thinking, in particular, of the many show exhibitors who toiled and did not count the cost, and laboured but asked for no reward. It is these people who gladden the heart rather more than the bankers at the Gala Evening (another cold evening this year to test the resilience of their glammed-up wives) or the celebrities who infest the place on Press Day.