Inside The Great Pavilion at Chelsea Flower Show

Following on from my earlier post at Chelsea Flower Show I conclude here now with Part 2, which begins in the Great Pavilion where I found some welcome emphasis on food growing. 

The Miracle-Gro’wers learning journey featured four historical gardens; from 1913 and Votes for Women, from the 1940s and Dig for Victory, from the 1970s and Flower Power and from 2013 with an Eco theme.  

Young growers prepared for air raid in their WW2 Dig for Victory garden.  The little girl has her gas mask at the ready!

200 schools across the country were involved in this project, and though I would never personally advocate the use of artificial feeds, at least Miracle-Gro have got these children growing.  The jury’s still out for me.  I guess it's a question of weighing up the pros and cons.

The East Malling fruit research folk were there, celebrating 100 years of scientific excellence.  Almost all cultivated apple trees in the UK, and indeed in most of Europe, are grown on Malling root stocks.  I enjoyed learning the history and the roots-and-all apple tree display was quite a sight. 

Apple tree, roots-and-all

I very much liked this watercress fountain.

And lovely heritage vegetable plants - Jaguar pea, Chantenay carrot, crimson broad bean - interplanted with ornamentals at Barnsdale Gardens.

Veggies grown in smart wooden raised beds sitting comfortably alongside what I call ‘metre square sack gardens ’.  

I did this with my group at one of my part-time contract jobs a couple of years ago, reusing the metre square sacks that the top soil, compost and chipped bark (yuk! so gross!!) had arrived in.  It's amazing and rather wonderful to see down-to-earth grassroots gardening like this at prestigious Chelsea Flower Show!

Sometimes you just want a nice cup of tea and at Sparsholt College’s Teavolution the choice of plants to grow for a tasty herbal infusion was wide.  Themed on The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party and using all possible surfaces as plant containers this was quite a display.  The table and chairs, the floor and the walls, and indeed any pocket of planting space available was filled with possibilities.  Mad but fab!

Maybe it's because I've such a fondness for history in all forms that I was drawn over to look at The Wardian Case.  Discovered in a locked shed at Tregothnan, best known these days as the only producer growing tea in England, the world's only surviving travelling mini-greenhouse was invented in the 1830s as a shipping device to transport plants safely around the world with limited water.  

Ancient and fabulous, this old piece of history once held specimens brought back by plant hunters from all around the world.  I love that!

And then there were the flowers to look at.

Because I teach gardening for urban dwellers who may only have a balcony or window box I use a lot of Alpine and dwarf varieties in order to create mini-gardens in containers.  The Alpine Garden Society’s sumptuous display was an inspiration, these divine little plants glistening like jewels.  Gorgeous!

The spiral lavender display at Downderry didn't disappoint.  

I especially loved this blue and white variety, ‘ballerina’.

I've never had much luck growing peonies, which is a shame because I adore them.  Like gorgeous plump pink pillows, I could have dived into the display at Kelways.

More of my favourite things - foxgloves, freesia and aquilegia at The Botanic Nursery.

I'm quite a fan of big, blousy flowering lusciousness.  The National Dahlia Collection demonstrated that these old-fashioned favourite flowers have been through quite a transformation.  

Modern varieties, much less blousy than those from my childhood memories, remain luscious.

And another old friendship was rekindled.  I have known Alan for more than 30 years and was so, so happy to receive a message from him telling me he would be in the pavilion with his brother, multi award-winning grower Don Billington.  It was such a joy to meet up with Alan again amongst the bromeliads and tropical plants at Don’s stand, Every Picture Tells A Story, a little haven of exotica and unusual tropical treats.  

I found out later that Don had won another well-deserved prize to add to his collection- a Chelsea gold - fabulous!

I started my Chelsea reviews feeling rather flat about the whole thing, but now that they’re written and posted I have to conclude that despite the lack of buzz and excitement, I had rather a good time after all.  Now we just need a little warmth and heat and we can all enjoy our gardens and our growing.

Love Chelsea Flower Show

Love Life

XXX

100th Chelsea Flower Show

I haven't been writing here so much in the last few weeks although a great deal has been going on, much of it 80s-related, with the launch of Iain R Webb's book ‘As seen in Blitz - fashioning 80s style’ at the ICA last weekend where we had a fabulous party on Friday night before I joined the panel for the Saturday talks, and the forthcoming V&A exhibition ‘Club to Catwalk’ and all the paperwork, agreements and sorting out bits and pieces it entails. On top of that there’s been loads of sowing and growing and allotment activity. It's not writers block, it's just that I haven't had the time to catch up with myself.

I have been battling over what to write about Chelsea Flower Show though, following my visit on Monday.   I'm not sure if it was the weather (cold for May with brightly glaring sky in that revolting shade of Tupperware white that hurts the eyes whilst denying even a hint of sunshine), or the distinct lack of cool celebrity guests this year (excepting Helen Mirren and Joanna Lumley, neither of whom I could get near), or my own personal battle with new varifocal specs that aren’t correctly aligned (new lenses being made as I write but will take another fortnight at least), or i-D Online requesting a piece with lots of pictures and 200 words.  Since the wordcount at this point is already more than 200 words trying to fit the 100^th anniversary Chelsea Flower Show into such a limited amount of text is not particularly inspiring or interesting.

 

Slipper orchid nestling at the Artisan Gardens - pure delight

I spent a while sorting through my photographs from the day, trying to figure out what had irked me.  There is a lack of vibrancy and colour in the outdoor shots that reflected the mood, but helped me understand the problem.  Whilst I have to confess that I am not a great fan of overly designed modern gardens anyway, preferring a more natural, ramshackle look, the hard landscaped and sophisticated show gardens just don't pack any punches for me without the contrasting softness and glorious colour that plants in full flower provide.  All plants need warmth and sunshine to open their flowers and be at their best, and with many flower heads closed against the cold, to my eye the landscaping, paths and walkways, sitting areas and the like, dominated the scene.  It's just not my scene.  

Arthritis Research Garden

Amazing Australian tree bark at Trailfinders

Trailfinders Australian Garden

East Village Garden

There were some very nice plantings however, most notably at The Arthritis Research UK Garden, Trailfinders Australian Garden and East Village Garden.

The Mindfulness Garden was a joy, teeming with gorgeousness and complete with meditating Buddhist monk.

I adored the Artisan Gardens, all of which looked fantastic despite the weather and the overnight rain.  A good deal of dry stone walling had been used in several of them along with informal, natural and native planting.  Gardens like this look beautiful in all seasons and are much more my kind of thing.  It's hard to pick a favourite – Un Garreg (made from One Stone) was really exquisite, combining Welsh sandstone and natural planting with dry stone walling techniques to expertly recreate a very beautiful, natural little sanctuary, the stones fabulous to touch.  I always like to feel stones, they hold so much information.  

The NSPCC Garden of Magical Childhood featured the kind of treehouse all children dream of, and more native favourites in the kind of garden all children would enjoy.  

A Hebridean Weavers Garden ( for Motor Neurone Disease) featured more treasured skills; thatching and dry stone work using Lewisian Gneiss, an extremely hard stone only found in Shetland and the Hebrides.  

Get Well Soon (for National Botanic Garden of Wales) was a gorgeous medicinal plants cure-all space featuring the ancient, traditional, modern and alternative, and more lovely stone.

If I had to choose one favourite (and it would be a hard choice) it would have to be the Water Aid Garden with its explosion of orange in an Indian-themed marigold heaven; the setting somehow worked perfectly in a cold English spring.  

I later discovered that it won a gold award.  Quite right too.

I headed over to the Artisan Retreats; themed designers summerhouses.  Much as you'd expect, everything was coming up roses at Cath Kidston, contrasting nicely against the cool blues at House of Hemingway.  

The London College of Fashion featured natural dying using plants which seemed wonderfully apt for the occasion.  

I was thrilled to find my old friend Rob Ryan there too, busily working on one of his distinctive paper cuts, and settled in to have lunch.

This must be Ryantown Studio at CFS!

Rob at work

Lunch break at Rob Ryan's summerhouse. Cynthia Grandfield and me.

I have known Rob since 1985 and very much enjoyed seeing his career grow and grow.  He's such a talent.

Then I headed indoors, to the Great Pavilion.  More of that in the next post though.

Love a Centenary Celebration

Love Life

XXX

Seeing detail - Almond Blossom

Spring is really, truly, finally here.....at last.  Better late than never.

Blue skies and almond blossom.  What a treat.

Love Spring Signs

Love Life

XXX

"I always wanted to be a black-and-white photograph..."

It seems that 2013 is going to be a fun year for us old 80s reprobates.  I am mightily excited!  There is much to celebrate.

Firstly, Iain R Webb’sforthcoming book about Blitz magazine, aptly titled ‘As Seen in BLITZ: Fashioning ‘80s Style’, is due to be published any time now.  Personally I can't wait because THAT photograph from 1985, one of my all-time favourite pictures not least because I am clad in fabulous Hermes headscarves, is the cover.

 

One of my all-time favourites, THAT photograph by David Hiscock, make up byWilliam Faulkner, wearing Hermes headscarves for Blitz Magazine in 1985

I spent my teenage Sunday afternoons watching old black and white films from the 1930s, 40s and 50s on television.  There were only three channels in those days.  Every Sunday afternoon, or so it seemed at the time, there was a black and white movie on TV.  I loved the stars.  Bette Davis was then and remains today my favourite, but I loved them all - Jean Harlow, Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Ginger Rogers, Katherine Hepburn, Grace Kelly, so many more.  I loved the hair, I loved the outfits, but mostly I loved the lighting.  I loved the still photographs from the time; the drama of black and white, the way the light fell and sculpted the actresses face.  This was all huge inspiration to me back in the early 80s when I was dressing up and wearing sculpted and shaved hairdos, my make up always very dramatic.  I wanted to look like one of those black and white photographs.

I told Iain this when we met to talk about the book last year.  More recently he sent me a lovely email and the photograph below "...off to the printers you went...  AND YOU MADE THE COVER! You ARE a black and white photograph!!!

Now it's real!

Everything goes full circle doesn't it?  As a teenager in the 1970s I loved things from the 1940s, thirty years earlier.  In the last year or so I've been reconnecting with lots of old friends from the 80s and enjoying it enormously.  Now our 80s, the subversive underground counter-culture 80s, is finally being celebrated, thirty years on.  I’ve had a few meetings with the Victoria & Albert Museum over the last few months in connection with their forthcoming exhibition ‘Club to Catwalk’, which starts in July.  They've spoken to lots of my old friends and contemporaries as many of us are loaning and creating for the show.  Roll on this summer, I have a feeling the opening party will be fabulous, and I am in full social whirling mood in this, my Golden Jubilee year!

I will have more news about this exhibition in due course as I have something extremely exciting up my sleeve to share...

In the meantime there is a book to look forward to.  ‘As Seen in BLITZ’ is available now to pre-order, and will be in the shops in a few weeks time.  

And if you're around in May the ICA in London are holding a weekend to celebrate the book's launch.  Go here for more information.

Love a black and white photograph

Love a book cover

Love Life

XXX