Chelsea Flower Show Highlights / Lowlights 2015

I had so much expectation for the Chelsea Flower Show that I had bought tickets back in January - especially as the surrounds of the neighborhood of Chelsea was getting into the spirit and displaying their homage to this institution of an event.


Sloane Square had installed a fake wisteria tree with a bar and even organized rickshaw tours that would take tourists around the best of the shop windows in the area.

The best strip was this section where two shops next to each other created a great visual that stopped traffic.

The gown of flowers and the golden coach belied the hailstones and got me into the spirit.

It is the 150 year anniversary of Alice in Wonderland and there were homages inside and outside the show.  This was the most amusing and fun bit of the whole show.

I am going to be that bore that finally will have to say that this year was not very good.
I don't want to compare it to previous years because the Chelsea show isn't crop farming for goodness sake but I left not feeling very inspired.

Something outside the official show should not have been one of the more memorable things of the day.

Sorry to not be glowing with positive declarations but as you know I am not a blogger with a vested interest and can only be honest.
I don't know latin names of any plant without having to google it and I only have a window box and a few pot plants so I go by different barometers than say a person who lives in the shires who owns a full set of gardening tools.

I go by inspiration and if it taught me something and made me remember an element of garden design that I will pin for my future imaginary dream garden.

This didn't happen like it did the previous years.

But this is my own opinion so please click here on this link to have a browse if you didn't get tickets or you live overseas.

But I have uploaded the best bits of the show for you.

This is the Japanese artisan garden ( click for link ) which won gold for the designer who has won the medal the past decade!

It was a garden that I would love to have in my back yard.
But as some regular readers of my blog may remember I went to Kyoto and visited numerous gardens and unfortunately it has skewed my view on it...

The feature that astonished everyone was the use of rounded moss in the planting which of course in the west is seen as a weed and pest.  But some of you will remember that the Moss Gardens in Kyoto is considered one of THE renown gardens in Japan  which I wrote about here.

Also having spoken to a few guides in Japan during that trip, I did wonder if this garden would have picked up a prize over there. So it did make me see that even gardening shows have their own standards and cultural standard in which they judge.

The artisan gardens were a bit melancholic in tone this year.

One garden's brief was for someone with motor neuron disease and another garden was supposed to have been deserted because there were no jobs.
I watch the news every night...I didn't want to be reminded of the woes of the world in what was supposed to be a sanctuary.

This was the Telegraph garden that won gold. (click for better pics!)

This garden below garnered much attention because the garden designer was a civilian who had won the BBC show Great Chelsea Garden Challenge.

The winner was a Northerner complete with flat cap and a honest lilt of an accent who designed the brief for a front garden of a suburban home.  This was to highlight how front gardens get neglected and how it could be used to plant more green to the benefit of the environment.

It was a real crowd pleaser and showed the power of TV because people were queueing to speak with him as many must have watched the show and felt they knew him.

Terrible picture of Monty Don who was one of the main presenters to the daily show that the BBC broadcasts on prime time - plus he is the hunk of gardening no?

The show is very watchable and is the reason why I started going to Chelsea  ( the other is getting older!)

Ok, now it is a personal thing but I don't like it when people just say they don't like something but can't articulate why.
I don't want you to think me a spoil sport and now must qualify why I wasn't inspired by the show gardens.

This is a perfectly lovely garden with the usual smart planting and sculptural elements.
This was the Brewin Dolphin garden that won gold.

It was perfectly lovely but it seemed the main feature of this garden was the hand cut pieces of slate that the flooring and the features were made out of.
That's fine that there was a lot of thought behind the garden but the space shouldn't need explaining and giving me a guilty conscience by making me give more credit because of all that extra work you imposed on yourself.
If the slate wasn't hand cut I wonder if there would have been the same buzz.

The same goes to the garden that won Best in Show!

It didn't move me.

 Although the garden designer did move boulders from Chatsworth.
 
But once again, that seemed to be the whole point of this garden.
I know this not only through overheard conversations in the crowd but the BBC and every interview in regards to this garden.

"Oh, the work that has gone into it. How heavy! How did they manage." they kept repeating.

If physical strength and engineering is needed to impress the judges and the crowd then there is no hope for any of us without a crane at hand.

Now that we got garden analysis out of the way...here are some fluffy bits.

Peter Beale roses beat David Austin in the stand display.

But the award to best scent in the whole show goes to one of the new flowers for David Austin called Desdemona that had the most exquisite fragrance.


I adore this English style planting.

Rows of three was a very effective planting method.

I have noticed that peonies aren't particularly photogenic.
This does no justice whatsoever to these blooms.

This Roselette peony variety from Binny Plants was one to remember for me and am considering buying a pot.

Avon bulbs always delivers the best tulips with an astonishing variety of shapes and colors.

Do you like auriculas?

I didn't think I did but this stand made me like them and see them differently.
I did think myself ridiculous for not liking a flower - how dare I!

These foxgloves and begonias only got silver gilt - how on earth do they judge this!

Another crowd pleaser are hyacinths.

You might incorporate some empty space filled with mirrors and cacti in your water feature?

The one thing I will do if I ever have hedges is to clip them to different levels because it added so much visual interest with just that little touch.

Hope you enjoyed the tour and remember that for better pics to click on the official website and you might even want to catch a few BBC daily shows about Chelsea.