Chelsea Flower Show special: Day 1
The first instalment in my week-long coverage of the annual RHS Chelsea Flower Show, brought to you live from the show ground!
Hi, I’m Dan, and this is my alternative gardening newsletter, The Earthworm. Whether you’re a first-time reader or a long-time subscriber, thanks for being here. The Earthworm is a reader-supported publication. The two best ways you can support my work are to share this newsletter with a friend, and to consider upgrading to a paid subscription. And remember, the entire back catalogue of features, interviews, columns and more is freely available to all members of The Earthworm community. Why not take a scroll down memory lane?
Gardens? What gardens?
I’ve seen steel drum bands; ballet dancers; a lady playing electric violin to a hard rock backing track; carnival dancers preparing to perform; Chelsea pensioners photobombing film crews; models wearing William Morris-print textiles, holding shiny, unused hand trowels; fire fighters; RNLI lifeboat crews; RAF service people; a woman doing yoga, by herself, in front of a row of men wielding long-lens cameras; Monty Don looking at some colour swatches; stallions and bulls and eagles and other animals, life-sized and hand-carved from gnarled old bits of timber; champagne stands; gin and tonic stands; some very posh portaloos; Carol Klein pointing at a lupine; a woman playing a gigantic alpine horn; the highest concentration of floral print fabrics of anywhere on the planet; a male vocal choir singing sea shanties; a military brass band; and Alan Titchmarsh playing the double bass in a string quartet. But gardens? What gardens?
I’ve seen – inhale – Mary Berry, Joanna Lumley, Clare Balding, James Purefoy, Alexa Chung with her dad, Stephen Merchant with his mum, Patrick Grant with his mum, Joan Collins, Reece Shearsmith, Sophie Raworth, Anneka Rice, Blue Peter presenters young and old, Nick Knowles, Will and Dom off of The Repair Shop, Victoria Coren Mitchell, dozens more celebs whose faces I recognise but whose names I can’t quite place – all of them surrounded by swarms of photographers. Oh, and did I mention Alan Titchmarsh playing the double bass in a string quartet? But gardens, what gardens?
I have spent the past four hours on my feet, braving – OK, enjoying – the pure spectacle that is the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. But this isn’t just any old day at the world’s most famous and prestigious flower show; this is press day. Hence the uniquely bizarre and magical combination of very famous people, very strange PR stunts, and photo opportunities aplenty.
Of course, there are also lots of gardens here. I was just being facetious. But I’m not kidding when I say that by the time I reached the top of Main Avenue – where all the big show gardens are located – the ferns and flowers and trees and water features and sunken seating areas and reclaimed materials and native species and pollinator-friendly plants, all started blurring together to form one explosively colourful jumble in my mind.
It is a rare thing for plants, planting and gardens to be responsible for this level of sensory overload. It would be unfair to call it stressful, but standing behind a shin-high barrier (you’re not allowed into the gardens unless invited) and surrounded by the circus described above, I have found it impossible to look and listen and experience the gardens in the way that I normally would. Immersively. Calmly. Quietly. Did I mention Alan Titchmarsh playing the double bass in a string quartet? (There is a degree of irony in this, of course, considering that so many of the individual show gardens have been designed to raise awareness for the regenerative role that plants can play in our mental health.)
And to be perfectly honest, most of the bigger show gardens on Main Avenue left me feeling a bit cold. Again, not because they are bad gardens – every petal on every flower is pristine, the colour palettes tasteful, the planting combinations just lovely – but without standing, or even better sitting in the garden, I found it impossible to feel inspired. And inspiration is sort of the whole point of Chelsea.
All of which sounds a bit negative, which I don’t mean it to be. I’ve had a great time. I’ve enjoyed the theatre. And theatre, really, is what Chelsea is all about. These are show gardens, after all, as faithful a representation of our own gardens as Les Miserables is to the realities of poverty and deprivation in 19th century France. And there have been some real highlights.
I loved, in particular, the garden designed by Urquhart & Hunt for Rewilding Britain, which imagines a plot of land given back to nature and inhabited by beavers, complete with twig dams. All of the plants are native to the South of England, and the garden provides a little snapshot of what our landscape could look like if major landowners gave even a tiny proportion of their estates back to the wildlife who it was wrested from in the first place. Though there is also something more than a little uncanny about this completely artificial wilderness, situated a mere cork’s pop from one of the many champagne stands.
I’ve also met a lot of very nice and interesting people: garden designers, first-time exhibitors, actual real-life celebrities, pseudo-celebrities, mothers of celebrities, nursery owners, succulent specialists, bonsai obsessives, and one incredibly charming Chelsea Pensioner. In the days to come, I’ll be bringing you interviews with all of these people, as well as many, many more photos.
But for now, I need a drink. See you tomorrow.
And you've already got a Monty Don and Carol Klein sighting! Nice work! But I'm still waiting for the selfie.
Funny, informative, tongue-in-cheek yet respectful. Looking forward to the rest of the week and…the photos!