The mammoth Floral Pavilions and the amateur and professional plant
exhibitions are where all the action takes place. Scientific exhibits, model
glasshouses and displays of tools and equipment are also popular.
But if you want to see any part of it in person, you have to book your
tickets well in advance because everything sells out way before the show even
begins.
For us “commoners” who want to see the latest
gardening techniques but can’t afford to pop over to London, we can visit the
website where each section of Chelsea can be viewed.
All you have to do is click on to the different sections with names like
“Show, Chic, Courtyard, and City Gardens, or Great Floral Pavilion, Floral
Art” and the “Market Place”. Garden
knowledge is at your fingertips, and you don’t even have to rub elbows with
all those snooty RHS members.
The display gardens are smaller versions of what
you might find in some of the more posh houses around Britain.
They are recreated here and have dreamy names like “After
the Lawn” by designer
Stephen Firth.
“The garden depicts an area
formerly lawn which was very labour intensive and ecologically unsound. The
garden is now environmentally friendly and consists of materials which are all
either from sustainable sources or are reclaimed, re-used or recycled.”
“A ramshackle garden hut provides a focal
point. It contains old tools and redundant equipment such as an old lawn mower,
roller, rakes, turfing iron and scythe. The hut has an environmentally friendly
thatched roof of sustainable heather and walls and floor constructed from
reclaimed oak beams and floorboards.”
Ok, so that one sounds a little uppity, but it was actually my favorite.
To me it just looked rustic, earthy and inviting.
With names like “The 4head Garden- from Merlin to Medicine”, A
Colourful Suburban Eden, An Australian Inspiration, Wild Bird Garden, The Knot
Garden and Garden of Hope, how can you not want to see every single one of
these beauties?
One word of warning though, Diarmuid Gavin, the infamous Irish designer’s
garden is not a suburban “Eden”, which is his title for the wild design that
plops big colorful balls on sticks in the middle of grasslands and lilies.
He even has a big garden house smack in the middle of the plantings, and
it is covered in these balls. Diarmuid
likes to think that he is nudging those uppity RHS judges to think outside of
the lines.
Lots of the gardens won gold or silver gilt awards…the equal to being
knighted if you are a gardener. The
Queen, Ringo Starr and loads of other not so famous all come to Chelsea.
If you want to see any of the gardens featured at Chelsea, or the new plants,
or the Queen's visit, or hot tips from the exhibitors in the Great Pavilion -
all you have to do is go to the website. If you don’t have a computer your local library has
several, and a friendly assistant who can help you.
For me, I learned quite a lot from the mother of all
garden shows. Every night I watched
the highlights on TV dreaming of the day when I can graduate from my tiny
English garden to that big garden in God’s country…Ohio. As for all those Latin names, I tried my new plant dictionary
and I think I’ll stick to the good ‘ol names my grandmother taught me.
In
June, the “mother of all garden shows” takes place in England.