A Chelsea like no Other

How we’ve missed you!

For the first time ever, the RHS Chelsea Flower Show has been held in September.  The colours, the sunlight, even some of the exhibitors are different.  But reassuring, it’s still the Chelsea we all love, glamorous, floriferous, trend setting and fabulous.  After two and half years in the Covid dessert, when more people than ever have turned to their gardens, balconies, public parks and Nature for solace and sanity, it’s good to be back in the grounds of Royal Hospital Chelsea.

Chelsea Flower Show 2021 Entrance Gates installation

Making an Entrance

From the glorious entrance gates decorated in billowing, beautiful autumnal style by Tattie Rose Flowers with wonderful hips, hydrangeas and Usk Valley Roses, I knew any misgivings I may have had about the seasonal change could be put aside.  This is a Chelsea with a difference, that we shall talk about for years to come.  Change is good.  The RHS has challenged us to think differently.

Yeo Valley Organic Garden

Gorgeous Gardens

However, some things don’t change.  The crowds continue to gather around the gardens in Main Avenue.  Rightly so, with high quality designs combined with the skilful planting of mellow grasses, claret and copper-coloured blooms zinging with the occasional spots of sunshine yellow. These show gardens look very different from the pinks, purples and blues of May.  As an overarching theme, they celebrate Nature and its sustaining powers. The growers have risen to the unfamiliar challenge of delivering Chelsea-standard plants at the end of September.  These gardens are a feast and a masterclass in what can be achieved when autumn planting is a cornerstone.

Highlights are the Yeo Valley Organic Garden designed by Tom Massey where the character was provided by a giant steam bent oak ‘egg’ hide, pollarded English willow, Salix alba, a corten steel tank of flowing water and artfully positioned biochar posts made from felled ash trees with die back.  Perennial planting of persicaria, rudbeckia, helenium and kniphofia weave through and around the elements and provide the colour.

M&G Garden

The M&G garden by Harris Bugg is another favourite with its inspiration to improve the quality of life and health for city dwellers by creating more sustainable green spaces.  The industrial bronze tubing wrapping around and through the garden creates a strong rhythm and leads the eye around naturalistic planting with injections of beauty provided by the fragile Echinacea pallida and a stunning mix of mature trees.

Bible Society: The Psalm 23 Garden

Sarah Eberle’s Psalm 23 garden for The Bible Society is also a star.  A still small voice of calm as an antidote to the crazy covid times. Echoing the natural landscape of Dartmoor, exquisitely planted with familiar native species including Euonymus europaeus, Viburnum opulus roseum, blended with varieties from around the world including the giant thorned Rosa pteracantha and Eupatorium ‘ Lucky Melody’.  It’s a wonderful garden which restores the soul.

Main Pavilion

So often packed, this year, the pavilion’s space is a luxury, filled with new visitors and some old.  

It is an autumn bonus to have salvias. So many of them, taking centre stage, reminding me they should be everyone’s late summer staple.

Salvias

Rudbeckia triloba ‘Prairie Glow’

I was also captivated by the gold winning plant display at Hare Spring Cottage Plants and with its Rudbeckia triloba ‘Prairie Glow’.  In previous Chelsea years, Stella Exley would have treated us to every variety of camassia.  Apparently she revelled in this year’s autumn challenge.

Anenome hupehensis var. japonica ‘Rotkappchen’

Another attraction is Binny Plants, all the way from West Lothian in Scotland, with a splendid display of perennials, including the delightful small pink double Anenome hupehensis var. japonica ‘Rotkappchen’ and the tasteful Alstroemeria psittacine. Their display is lovely.

Foster’s Exotic and Unusual Plants

I’m a sucker for a succulent.   Surreal Succulents and Foster’s Exotic and Unusual Plants more than satisfied my fetish for these remarkable plants.  They are Chelsea newcomers, I think, as we become increasingly fascinated in the exotic. Several passers-by remarked as I examined their extraordinary forms: ‘don’t sit on that!’  I blame my interest on years bedtime reading Dr Seuss!

There are many pavilion stars and this journal does not begin to cover them all. There’s lots to see even if the pavilion is not as busy as usual.

Digitalis x valinii 'Firebird'

Trends and Themes

The wonder of Chelsea is that it taps into what’s new and shows you what you may not have noticed until it stares in the face at the showground.

• Dramatic black-framed greenhouses at Alitex and Hartley Botanic, so delightful you could move in.

• Fences stained black as a disappearing backdrop for your garden planting.  You heard it here first.  Take note, very easy to copy.

• Digitalis x valinii 'Firebird': maybe the growers found it particularly straightforward to nurture this summer. If they did, so will you.  I love its summer-long spires of plum, apricot pink.  A total winner which will be finding its way into my garden very soon.

• Dahlias: thanks to Sarah Raven and newcomer Dahlia Beach, these blooms get better and better for spectacular autumn colour.

• Japanese tools: I counted at least three stands selling these wonders of modern gardening.  I can’t recall any in 2019.  If you haven’t yet discovered the joy of Japanese tools, put at least one of these wonders on your Christmas list.  They will make your gardening chores easier.  Don’t forget camellia oil for your stocking.

Dahlias and other heavenly confections at Gaze Burvill

Brilliant Balconies

The RHS introduced a new ‘balcony’ show garden category this Chelsea. Beautifully executed by emerging designers and their teams to show what can be achieved, even in small spaces, these gardens are enchanting, practical and well worth a visit for inspiration. I was particularly taken by the flower rich Balcony of Blooms designed by Alexandra Noble and its floating edge of Gaura lindheimeri ‘Karalee White’.

Balcony of Blooms

Shop til you Drop

And once you have had your fill of gardens, plants, the new and the fashionable, you can shop. September Chelsea still offers the visitor a pleasure park of shopping for garden furniture, sculpture, pots, gardening gear great and small, seeds and plug plants.   And for the first year I can remember, diamonds!

South West in Bloom / Stonebarn

Tune in and Enjoy

If you are lucky enough to have a ticket to this one-off wonder which is September Chelsea, you have a treat in store.  If not, sit by your television and watch the BBC coverage which will be endless.   It’s brilliant to have all those hours back on our screens and to have this world famous flower show back in SW3.

Meanwhile, I’m returning on Thursday to volunteer at the Horatio’s Garden stand. I can’t wait!