Just. NOTES // Chelsea preview
Judging day at Chelsea Flower Show and it's great to see so many gardens focussing on nature, grassroots initiatives, and mental health. I miss my garden but find solace in what comes next.
I was going to write about Glastonbury, Port Eliot and the nature of festivals, after waking up in the night thinking about the promise of outdoor summer shenanigans to come. But as the day unfolded and many errands put writing on hold until the end of the day, I found my attention distracted to that other very English festival – the Chelsea Flower Show.
As I write, pre-show coverage goes lives on the BBC and I’m tapping along to behind-the-scenes peeks at gardens and stands inspired by urban brownfield sites, mushrooms, insects, home and placemaking, and the importance of edible food growing in schools. It’s uplifting to see so many gardens that are genuinely inspired by nature, improving wellbeing, sustainability, and giving back.
Having worked in the industry for many years now, it’s also great to give due diligence to the immense amount of creativity and work that goes into bringing one of the exhibits from concept to end result – the initial idea, the sponsorship and support from organisations such as the RHS and the brilliant Project Giving Back, the research, production, and teamwork. Those that design, those that build the hard landscaping, those that grow and place the plants. I look at my own largely flagstoned blank canvas of a backyard – about the same size as some of the show gardens – and wonder at the power of nature, powered by human vision and ambition, to transform.
It makes me miss my old garden, a verdant space with multiple trees, shrubs, climbers, swathes of foliage and blooms, and the new pond we dug out during lockdown. I go to pick my youngest up from a party just one street away and can’t help doing a drive by of my front garden. I am relieved to see that it is flourishing without me, clouds of acid green Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii and Euphorbia x martinii speared by the tall stems of pale yellow and soft blue Iris siberica ‘Unbuttoned Zippers’ (what a name, what was I thinking?!) and the white and gold Iris x hollandica ‘Alaska’. The oxeye daises have brought their usual insistence of wild, adding bright white highlights to shady areas under wild service and rowan trees.
Although the garden now belongs to someone else, I still feel the tinge of ownership, but like most of the show gardens at Chelsea when they open to the public, it is a look but do not touch affair (or historically this is my experience). It’s strange to not be able to reach out and nurture that which I have planted, to pick the odd bloom or two. To only linger for a few seconds so as not to intrude on what is now someone else’s land. To linger just enough to keep the heartache of leaving a garden at bay.
In contrast, many of the gardens shown at Chelsea this year will actually be relocated to other spaces, rocks and water features, pergolas and benches, and all those wonderful trees, shrubs, underplanting, and flowers. Less waste, more joy, a truly shared experience. I am much heartened by this and look forward to a flower-filled week, one that will most certainly inspire professionally and for various projects I am working on but hopefully rejuvenate on a personal level too.