It’s always the first entry in my new diary, even before the birthdays of friends, anniversaries or holidays: the words ‘RHS Chelsea’. I’m unsure what event might be so important that I would miss my annual trip to the ‘Greatest Flower Show on Earth’. I think of Chelsea as the gardener’s answer to Glastonbury, though usually with less mud and better loos.
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Chelsea is very much a ‘show’, in that there is some expectation for the experience to be extraordinary and entertaining, and indeed it is. Where else I am going to see garden designers given licence to let their imaginations run riot, and see the latest varieties of hellebore, delphinium or greenhouse?
The excitement starts the moment I get a message that tickets are due to be released. Yes, there is the buzz of the show, but it is more than that. The event heralds that summer is here once again. Our wisteria and roses will bloom again, our sweet peas will climb their sticks, and our pea pods will plump up. We know this, but it somehow becomes official after Chelsea.
The morning of the first day finds me as excitable as a kid at Christmas. Each area fills me with joy, be it the Great Pavilion (or the Marquee as I still call it) or the avenue of spectacular show gardens. It is not too far-fetched to liken the latter to the catwalks of Paris Fashion Week, where somewhat impractical but nevertheless fabulous clothes are paraded. Both are there to dazzle us, and places where a designer can push the boundaries of their creativity, taking their chance to astound and intrigue eager onlookers like me.
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Chelsea is the gardener’s answer to Glastonbury, though usually with less mud and better loos.
I occasionally hear mutterings about the impracticality of the gardens. Thank goodness, I think to myself, that someone has been given the chance to think outside the box, to have fun with plants and planting. This is what I really appreciate about the week-long event: no matter whether I like a garden or not, there will always be something to take away from it – an idea, a notion or fancy of something I want to do to my own urban patch. Spotting plants I would never have otherwise come across is a good enough reason for going. Whereas other shows are brilliant for buying plants and meeting growers, Chelsea stimulates the imagination. It makes me rethink the possibilities of my own space.
To get the best from your day, you need to look closely, by which I mean, get as near as you can and really concentrate on the details. Each garden, large or small, contains so many tiny ‘moments’ and little vignettes. The underplanting deserves hours of study alone. Peep under the carefully chosen trees and you will find so much inspiration. I crouch down when I can, often discovering the most unusual ground cover I hadn’t ever considered. It took a visit or two for me to realise that my own space has more bare patches than it should. Chelsea designers generally treat such barren bits as a missed opportunity and the generosity of planting is something that has changed my own perspective. They leave not an inch unused.
Each garden, large or small, contains so many tiny ‘moments’ and little vignettes. The underplanting deserves hours of study alone.
Some exhibitors never let you down. I’m thinking of Mr Kazuyuki Ishihara, whose diminutive gardens are always a highlight – possibly the highlight, for me. A previous design saw him covering a Japanese tea house in moss cobbles. It was all I could do not to climb the fence and curl up among the plump, deep-green cushions. The man is a magician. There have been some deeply emotional moments too, such as when I stood in awe, rendered speechless at Dan Pearson’s Chatsworth Garden in 2015. I may have had to hold back a tear or two and could happily have pitched my tent among the time-worn rocks, wildflowers and woodruff-lined stream and stayed there the entire week. Each year I spot a garden that makes me want to rip my own out and start again. Last year’s was Sarah Price’s Cedric Morris-inspired design with rose-pink pigmented walls and trademark Benton irises and grey poppies. A masterstroke.
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The gardens are less ‘spectacular’ nowadays, which is a good thing, and doesn’t mean to say less interesting. It means that the RHS takes the environmental impact of each exhibit seriously, and designers must now fulfil many extra criteria. Gone are the days of flying in 9m palms from the Middle East. None of which detracts from the show – if anything, it makes me enjoy it all the more as it has moved more in line with my own thinking. I rather enjoy watching visitors shaking their heads in disbelief at the Golds, or Silvers, they disagree with. But if Chelsea can’t give us gardeners a bit of a shake, then what can?
Chelsea designers generally treat such barren bits as a missed opportunity and the generosity of planting is something that has changed my own perspective.
Being city based, I also relish the opportunity to see nurseries in the Great Pavilion that I wouldn’t normally get to. The new space created for first-time exhibitors, each stand barely larger than a dining table, is a welcome introduction. I rarely agree with the RHS Plant of the Year, but I would happily take the stunning Agapanthus Black Jack (= ‘Dwaghyb02’), which won last year, its flowers as purple as a jar of damson jam, or Viburnum plicatum f. tomentosum Kilimanjaro Sunrise (= ‘Jww5’), the winner in 2015, into my own plot.
I love my annual trip to Chelsea. For all the blue-sky thinking, there is a reassuring predictability to the show: the location of the Royal Hospital; the date of the third week of May; and the arrangement once inside, which helps regular visitors get around without missing anything. Except, of course, that I do miss things. Am I the only one who watches the TV coverage and wonders if they’ve been at another show? The gardens appear very different when Monty Don is showing viewers around. And I know Carol Klein will always find one stand in the Pavilion I swear wasn’t there when I did my 20,000 steps under the awnings. Well, there’s always next year.
