Chelsea Press Day
Second year students went to help out at the Chelsea Flower Show on Press day. Me and Brendan were chaperones and ushers for the Bulb Committee. We quickly familiarised ourselves with the route in the Great Plant Pavilion to where they needed to go and which stands they were judging. When the judges were conferring, we had to make sure no one was standing, loitering/ lingering too close or too long/ taking photos, as results have to be kept top secret until the next day - plus there might be last minute changes.
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| Photo 1 Narcissus presented with perfection - judges like the way the pots undulated a little. |
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| Photo 2: Ashford Nursery Stand. |
The judges were audibly excited when they came to Ashford Nursery stand - this is the first time
Hepatica have been on display on Chelsea (they usually have flower earlier). Photos were taken first before even making an assessment. The expertise of plantsman John Massey is visible in his choice of plants and his arrangement. He even froze his backdrop plants -
Larix and
Salix to be at the stage where the
Larix was flowering and the
Salix leaves are just breaking bud to be in synchronised harmonious timing with the
Hepatica as it would be in nature. Even the way pine needles were distributed onto the mulch and
Hepatica plants with just leaves used as buffering foliage to the floral display was of high consideration.
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| Photo 3: Some nurseries like Harperley Hall had visibly rare plants like different varieties of Meconopsis. |
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| Photo 4: The Alpine Garden Society got much approval and a gold for their display too. |
Kelways Garden Plants also had a great display of unusual rock garden type plants, including some rare
Primula, the judges described them as having a good 'theatrical' exhibit - which is much different from the AGS in that it feels more like a collection of plants.
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| Photo 5: A section of Kevock's stand. |
Other highlights at Chelsea:
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| Photo 6: A red carpet with 100s of crocheted red poppies. |
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| Photo 7: Jekka McVicar's Apothecary garden with espaliered and clipped apple trees and herbal plants (who is also featured in person middle right between two pink ladies). |
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| Photo 8: My favourite show garden was by Cleve West - inspired by Dartmoor National Park. Not even that unusual but on closer look has some uncommon plants and I like how it feels serene and settled as a space. |
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| Photo 9: The finished version of the Hardy's Cottage Garden Plant's show garden that I was helping with. |
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| Photo 10: The L'Occitane people do their Provence gravel extremely well - sections of it could be like it was lifted straight from South of France. |
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| Photo 11: Didn't like the explanation of the garden or the name but thought the lush greenery inside the granite stone cube worked very effectively. |
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| Photo 12: One of the Artisan gardens - good to encourage more greener and inventive use of spaces. |
I don't know if I was more comfortable with Chelsea this year, having seen it before a couple of times and knew how it worked a bit more, but I thought the show gardens were more diverse this year, even if nothing bowled me over completely. Naturalistic planting is still very much liked - it is strange to consider though that now we are mimicking nature so much, we are getting a weird simulacrum. I realised though that the Great Plant Pavilion - many of the displays are very similar/ almost the same every year, but then it is about a annual traditional demonstration of a very specific kind of horticultural craftsmanship.
