Photo: Harkness Rose Garden display at the Chelsea Flower Show

by Mary Holbrow   

Here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when we think of Chelsea we're likely to think of carrots and onions and lettuce. That's because nearby Chelsea is home to a big wholesale produce market.

But among gardeners worldwide, going to Chelsea means making the pilgrimage to the Chelsea Flower Show in London. This show has everything—indoor and outdoor displays on a grand scale, prizes, medals, exotic entries from all over the world, sophisticated garden architecture, royalty (Prince Charles received a horticulture medal from the Queen), nostalgia, and yes, even fancy arrays of carrots, onions and lettuce.

I was thrilled to be in London for a day of the May 19-23 Chelsea show, especially since we didn’t have our usual New England Spring Flower Show in Boston this year. We did have Blooms!, an enjoyable informal event downtown, thanks to the efforts of volunteers, Massachusetts Horticultural Society members, garden clubs and area businesses. But for a hard-core flower show junkie, the Chelsea show was the perfect fix.

In London I stayed at a small hotel near Kensington Gardens. Several other guests in the breakfast room were in town for the show, and the streets seemed full of people with the same idea—I met a fellow gardener from Brookline over a menu in a fish and chips joint. Gardeners weren’t hard to spot, trudging along with their Flower Show shopping bags and plants, studying their maps of the show’s layout on the Royal Hospital grounds as they waited for the route 360 bus (or the 11, 137 or 217), eagerly talking over the BBC coverage.

Sponsored by the Royal Horticultural Society, the 2009 show brought in some 150,000 people from all over the world—with advance tickets, of course, since that’s the only way to get in. The RHS has been putting the show on for about 150 years, though they missed out occasionally in war years.

Unlike our New England show, the British one doesn't have a set theme, although patterns that reflect current ideas and concerns tend to emerge. Many of the displays emphasized sustainability, social causes and "credit crunch" thinking. I won't try to describe what I saw in any detail except to say that, in addition to acres of dazzling outdoor furnishings and seas of roses, lavender, tulips, and delphinium, there were specialty displays featuring:

--ways to improve society through horticulture, especially in schools and among prisoners and homeless people. The gentleman handing out brochures (left) is a prisoner; he helped create The Key, a show garden whose theme was life's journey. "We got a lot of folks working on this," he said.

--environmental themes—e.g., plantings to encourage bees; green roof technology.

--edible produce in formal patterns—everything from aubergines to zucchini.

--gardens from around the globe, with exotic/tropical fruits and flowers from Australia, Grenada, South Africa, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and other commonwealth countries.

There were hang-ups, of course. Some people commented that the show was smaller than usual—the economy, you know. One garden turned out to contain a gnome figure; that's against the rules, and he was quickly ejected by officials. And then there was the jokey garden made of plasticine (a kind of clay used in claymation); not a real flower in it. Purists were not altogether pleased when that popular display attracted crowds and won a “people’s choice” award. Others said it just added to the fun.

  
 
Photos:
--Left, Laurent-Perrier Garden: Relationship between Art and Nature
--Below left, National Botanical Garden,Kirstenbosch, South Africa:  Indigenous South African flora
--Below right, Jersey Farmers' Union:  Vegetables, Culinary Herbs