Chelsea Flower Show, the rest of the day

After lunch it was time to do the Grand Pavilion. One of the highlights of Chelsea, it's enormous. It took us over an hour just to walk round the perimeter of it. It's a mixture of displays from horticulturalists, specialist growers, and displays from different societies. I love it and never tire of walking round.

As always, the NFU had an amazing display of fruit, flowers and vegetables






Interflora had sponsored a display, you couldn't call it a flower arrangement, called In Perspective. It was very, very good, but I'm not sure any photo is going to do it justice. It was made up of 7 rectangles, each one decorated with flowers of a different colour, and slightly offset, so you got an interesting view when you looked down them. Difficult to describe, but stunning.








Growers of all sorts of plants have displays, and everything is all out at the same time, and all in the best condition. Daffodils, tulips, gladioli, sweet peas, cacti, passion flowers, insectivorous plants, aquilegas - all there. You can't buy plants from Chelsea, but most growers will sell you seeds, or give you a catalogue.

One of the most amazing exhibits from from Thailand. It was enormous, extremely colourful, and everything on it made from flowers. Again, I doubt that this couple of photos will do it justice, but here goes








There were lots more highlights of the pavilion, including the young florist of the year competition where the theme was a jockeys colours, and this was the winner



There were also displays of water plants, tropical plants and strawberries, the best smelling stand in the place!

Then it was off to Ranleigh Gardens, a grassy, wooded area where picnics are had, and the Artisan Gardens are. One of my favourites was the Yorkshire garden, complete with iPad like frame



And one based on a Korean outside toilet!




After several hours, we were ready for another sit down, and a jug of Pimms on the grass was called for




We sat outside the champagne tent, and watched people coming out with bottles of champagne at 65 quid a time, we even saw one guy carrying two magnums, at 125 a go.

One last look round, and it was time to catch the shuttle bus back to Victoria, and the tube to St Pancreas. As usual we had a meal in the Betjeman Arms, then back home.

It was a great day, and one of the best Chelsea's I've been to. Of course, it helped that the sun shone, but the gardens were particularly good. Definite themes this year were sustainability, green walls, green roofs and insect houses were everywhere.






When I got back I discovered I'd taken 249 photos. Too many to post here, but if you want to see more, they're here. Not had time to edit or sort them, they're just as I took them. Will get round to labelling them soon!

Chelsea Flower Show , the morning

Yesterday was the highlight of my horticultural year, our annual visit to Chelsea Flower Show. Me and Stu go with a couple of friends, and as usual, have developed a bit of a routine ( or traditions as we like to call them!)

We go down the day before, travel in style by first class rail courtesy of cheap advance tickets, have a couple of drinks and some nibbles on the train. Then off to our hotel 10 mins walk from Victoria and about 15 mins walk from Chelsea. Walk along the Thames in the evening to Westminster, have a quick look at what's going on there, and then to The Sanctuary just round the corner, an Ale and Pie pub.

Up bright and early Tuesday morning to make sure we get to the show as close to 8am as possible, the medals have just been awarded and the crowds haven't built up, so you can see the big show gardens easily. We walk up Main Avenue, taking in the gardens, and by about 1030 we've done the big ones and it's time for a coffee.

Some of the highlights for me this year in this category were:

The Monaco Garden



It was stunning, and I could just picture it recreated at the back of my house! Difficult to tell from this photo, but the planting was all orange and lilacs, and at the back was a green wall. This one shows the planting better





The Laurent-Perrier Garden





Again with some stunning planting by Luciano Giubbilei, beautiful mixture of colours.

The Irish Garden



This one by Diarmund Gavin had received a lot of press, and not all of it complimentary, especially the fact that it had a sky pod, suspended from a crane. Well, I thought it was great, and so did the judges as it got Diarmund his first gold medal. The planting was very clever, nearly all green, naturally for an Irish garden, but cleverly using different shades, shapes and textures. I wanted to walk in it, but only the celebs are allowed to do that !




The B and Q garden.



This was spectacular and featured the highest growing structure there's been at Chelsea. Not sure how the tomatoes from it would be harvested though. The garden was mainly edible plants, and featured an "insect hotel"



It even had a perspex garden table with goldfish swimming around in it.

The Trailfinders garden

This is done by a group of Australians who give up a month of their time and come over here to build a garden. Last year they'd created a swimming pool as part of it, and when we saw the garden at about 8.30am they were celebrating their gold medal by taking a dip, and drinking cans of beer. This year they were a bit more subdued. No pool, and only a silver gilt medal. But, I was pleased to see them come round a bit about 1030 as they someone announced that the bar was open, and jugs of Pimms were fetched. It was a beautiful garden, and I'm not sure why it didn't get a gold.




The Daily Telegraph Garden

This got Best in Show award for its designer Cleve West. It was one of my favourites. Some great planting with bright yellows, reds and white together




And it was slightly quirky in places, with lots of columns, some upright, some not, and water spouts in the wall.




This one also had one of my favourite flowers, not sure what it was - looked like a cross between a fir cone and a thistle.




There were many other lovely gardens, including a tropical one from Malaysia and one sponsored by the British Heart Foundation which was based on the structure of heart muscle! The only other one I'm going to post a picture of is the one from Leeds City Council. Last year they'd created a set of lock gates, and I didn't think they'd be able to surpass that, but they did. This year it was a water mill, complete with working mill wheel.




It looked as though it had been there years. We learned from one of the gardeners that the moss had been stuck onto the mill with glue. The planting was lovely, and hopefully the garden will get moved to a public display in Leeds, the last two are in Roundhay Park.



After the show gardens we take in some of the traded stands, of which there'd are hundreds, and look at the smaller gardens. This year there were two categories, Urban and Artisan. The urban ones are always fun, and I was quite impressed with the outdoor bright blue carpet in this one.




And the green wall and water feature in this one




Some of the trade stands are nearly as good as the gardens, selling every possible type of garden ornament, furniture, art work and water features. Not cheap though. I was admiring a water feature which was basically a large bowl with a fountain in it, and the woman next to me dared to enquire about the price. She paled slightly when it was revealed to be £14,000. Before VAT of course.

There was just time before lunch to pop into the Floral art marquee, where both individuals and groups submit flower arrangements to illustrate a theme and compete for medals.




This was the winner, and my favourite, but not sure I'd fancy wearing it.





Now it was time for a well earned sit down, and some refreshment. A pint of beer and fish and chips. It was a sod-the-diet day!

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Rocco, part 2

More adventures of my cat Rocco. As well as drinking from the tap, he drinks from the water feature in the garden. Terrifies the frogs living in there. He also drinks from the pond, the bath, and the toilet. Not got a picture of his head down the loo yet, but am working on it.

He also likes to be high up. In the garden he sits on the highest walls, looking out over his territory. He also drives the dog a few doors down mad, as he sits on the wall at the bottom of their garden where he can't be reached. This is one of his favourite spots in the sun, can you see him?

If not, here's a close up of him looking inscrutable.

Spectacular Morris

It's fairly obvious I'm into folk, and all things related to it, and that (especially if you know my twittername), I'm a clog dancer. I dance northwest clog morris with a team called Yorkshire Chandelier, and have been doing so for over 25 years!  I get really p****d off with the national pastime of knocking our heritage and our traditions, when most other countries take great pride in them.  We can all take a joke - and let's face it, if you admit to being a Morris Dancer you have to be able to :-)   -  but we should celebrate our folk heritage more. This weekend we had a great opportunity to when the National Morris Spectacular took place in Sheffield - about 50 teams of all different traditions danced all day around the city centre - I was pleased to be one of them, although I'm not sure my feet agreed with me at the end of the day. Here's some pictures, hopefully demonstrating the variety of different styles of morris.

And if after all that you want to see some really good, arty ones, Stuart has posted some here.