It is difficult to know where to start. The wall of daffodils braving the 27
degree late May heat surprise? The
pitchers full of undrinkable Pimms?
Or the fact that somehow, someone, almost certainly a committee, decided to limit attendance over five
days to 157,000, exactly?
Or maybe it’s just the guy with the
hat.
But really, the place we started our
visit to the Chelsea Flower Show in London last week turned out to be just down
the street, in an amazing garden on Royal Hospital Road called the Chelsea
Physic Garden. It’s only been
there since 1673. One of the
wonderful things about Britain is that just about everywhere there is something
really amazing, there’s something else just as amazing about two blocks
away. In this case, it’s a four-acre
botanical garden that has been home base for over three centuries to some of
the world’s leading botanists.
Today it contains and, thanks to all kinds of helpful little signs, also
explains, some 5000 different plants.
Its location was chosen because, sitting
right beside the Thames, there is a warmer microclimate that allows non-native
plants to survive. As a result,
you have a chance to admire flowering plants from Crete, Madeira and the Canary
Islands, including an impressive 8 foot tall plant that apparently comes from the
top of the volcano in Tenerife, a place I thought was mainly famous for cheap
rum.
For
someone like me, whose personal self-improvement project is to remember the
proper botanical name of one new plant every year, (I am now up to twelve, I
think, but don’t ask me to remember them all at the same time, or I will
Crocosmia Lucifer you) the prospect of learning the names of even a fraction
of 5000 different plants feels like the work of several lifetimes. But the great thing about visiting a
garden with an actual gardener is that every time you round another bend you
hear, “Oh look, a magnifica minorus japonica!” (Don’t look it up; I
just made it up.) How on earth does she remember all these things?
For
our little visit the gardener’s highlight was the brand new section entitled
Edible and Useful Plants. If it
weren’t actually the case that all the plants identified in this area are in
fact either edible or useful or both, you’d be forgiven for thinking you had
dropped into a Monty Python skit. And now, ladies and gentlemen, it is time to visit the Edible and Useful Plant garden. Step this way, please.
For me, of course, the highlight was tea and a treat. An essential part of every British
garden tour.
And
then down the road and into the mob scene.
No
one could possibly not enjoy the Chelsea Flower Show. If you don’t like the flowers, which are overwhelmingly
stunning, or the gadgets – who knew there were so many different versions of
trowels? - there’s some glorious people-watching. Fetching summer dresses – okay, I’m just looking. The most
impossible combinations of green glen plaid sports jackets and insanely pink
striped bankers’ shirts. Expensive
up-to-the-minute-haircuts; some hair that looks like it’s never been cut. High heels in the mud. Every accent imaginable.
A
huge tent called the Great Pavilion, housing what feels like acres of flowers and
plants in glorious profusion. Some
80,000 orchids used in the Thailand display. Outside, cars covered in astro
turf, and plastic flowers, and little country cottages installed just for the
week of the show, and a strange display that looks like a concentration camp
guardhouse honouring 60 years of the Korean DMZ. This year, everywhere you turned there was something in
honour of the Queen’s Jubilee, including a display that consisted of pictures
of Her Majesty’s visits to the Show stretching back sixty years. It’s all there, really. A stall that sells high priced vintage
gardening books. A tree-shaded
forest glen filled with different models of garden cottages. Paper flowers hanging from trees. Pink champagne on ice. A bandstand.
And every conceivable garden ornament and sculpture you could never imagine
putting in your own backyard, but isn’t amazing the things people seem to like?
And
of course tea, and cakes. And yes,
since you asked, I did add one more flower to the list. It’s the Chelsea Flower Show Plant of
the Year 2012, Foxglove Digitalis
Illumination Pink. As the English would say, brilliant.
