Tuesday, May 29. 2007ChelseaFrom the Observer's Sunday Magazine, comes the Chelsea Garden Show roundup.
It is Monday lunchtime and I have just cycled home from the Chelsea Flower Show press day. I try to get there early to avoid the film crews and celebrities, the buzz and the hype. This is not easy, since these days style overwhelms content and draws the media like moths to a flame. Now I am back here at my desk wondering quite where to begin. I decided to concentrate on the plants rather than enter into the debate about the gardens for fear of not doing the debate justice. The gardens are where horticulture and design meet, but for now I want to look where, in my opinion, the real substance of the show lies - with the growers in the pavilion.... On the Botanic Nursery stand, where I was admiring the perennial Digitalis 'Glory of Roundway', I was told that the plants had been intended for the Birmingham NEC show in June, but that the Chelsea plants had gone over in the warm weather more than two weeks early - a common story.... And they included succulents too: The fantastic Southfield Nurseries, home of Cactusland, was as good as a sweetshop, with its rows of otherworldly succulents blooming in candy shades of tangerine and bubble-gum pink. They reminded me I was hungry and, after a sickly brownie designed to get my sugar levels back up, I found myself beside the Jekka's Herb Farm stand. In timely fashion Jekka fed me with peppery mustards that were not being used in the display, and they eclipsed the sugar in seconds. Delicious. Trackbacks
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