The Chelsea flower Show is a great British institution and justifiably so. Ideas, creativity, painstaking hard work and sheer beauty are all celebrated here every year, and everything runs like clockwork.
At least it does when you actually manage to get into the show. On Thursday, I got to Victoria to find utter chaos with the District and Circle Lines not running. So hundreds of us were squashed into a fleet of crowded double decker buses and we all streamed in with a collective air of excitement.
All apart from one lady who was supposed to meeting her son there...and she'd left her mobile phone at home.He wasn't there...and he was the one with the tickets!
When I say it was busy there, it was heaving in the heat...swarms of people wherever I looked, marching purposefully towards the main show gardens. It was difficult to get any decent photos of the main ones..too many people standing in front of them with heads, hats and other appendages making their way into my photos.
Oh look - a head! This was the best photo I could get of one of my favourite gardens...the l'occitane garden designed by Peter Dowle. A real sense of place here, so atmospheric of southern France with its wafts of heady herb scents....and I wanted to get under the pergola and drink a glass of ice cold rose wine. Either that or get the cheapest and fastest flight down to Nice....
I did like the Laurent Perrier garden by Arne Maynard too
And I thought the Lands End A rural Muse garden was delightful. From Rutland designer Adam Frost and inspired by the poet John Clare. it was an oasis of calm and shade. Again, among a throng of people all eagerly photographing and chattering away, I wanted to push them aside , hop over the rope and force my way to under the green oak framed shelter.
I didn't get a photo of of the lovely Doris, the caravan at the Caravan Club garden though. Standing on tiptoe, craning my neck in the crowd to take one, I was rather close to the woman with the strangulated vowels and lots to say in front. I suddenly shot back in horror...on the crown of her head I saw nits. I kid you not. Nits......I wonder if she knew. All I knew was I wasn't going to be the one to tell her. I stepped away pretty smartish!
Talking of smart...look at this....I was rather taken with this stand...loved the huge zinc planters and water feature - perfect for a town garden. Not that I live in a town, but I did love those planters....
When I came to the conservatories and greenhouses, I was in seventh heaven. .... Spent ages in the Allitex conservatory, and even longer in one of the Hartley Botanical Victorian greenhouses. It's so me! I fell in love with it there and then, and the sales advisor did look at me strangely when I asked if I could take a photo of it, and would he mind getting out of the way.
Isn't it just beautiful? I would live in there.....I've already got the same table and chairs....and can just imagine all my plants on the staging.....
And this sculpture by Christopher Lisney rather took my fancy...and made me smile.....
So many things to see, so many tools, plants and a greenhouse to put on the wish list, and all too soon it was time to leave....not before taking a few moments to admire the perfect symmetry of the Chelsea Hospital
and try not to be distracted by more plants on the
Chelsea Flower Show.....I do love you.....
But today's track is Songs from a secret garden......beautiful, haunting, a perfect soundtrack for a shady garden at dusk I always think....when twilight can be a time of sadness.....
