Hampton Court Flower Show

The One Show garden

I decided to go to the Hampton Court flower show at the last minute, managing to get both a ticket and a day off work. It was partly to make up for the disappointment of missing the Chelsea flower show. Not only were we going on members' day, but we even had a delightful sit-down lunch to look forward to.  Unfortunately I indulged in oysters at a restaurant the day before and was stricken by food poisoning. So we didn't go.

I left for Hampton Court - 28 miles away - in good time and expected to get there just after the opening time of 10am.

I finally got in at 12.45! Unbelievable.

For the last seven miles it was nose-to-tail, traffic just creeping along a centimetre every 10 mins or so. I was relieved I wasn't with J. because like most men, he has zero tolerance of traffic jams.

By the time I got to the show I was feeling slightly frazzled.

It's vast, and very crowded. I didn't stay long in the flower tent because there were too many people. I took a few pictures of plants that impressed me. - see below, Meanwhile the rose and floral arrangement marquee was very disappponting. I'd anticipated being hit by the scent of hundreds of roses, but it was an olfactory let down.

The rose displays were underwhelming. I realise in July roses are past their past but I still expected more abundance of blooms from professional growers.

I perused some of the show guides and saw that Mary Berry was due to speak at 2.30 in the food theatre. I went over there at 2pm but the queue was already massively long so there was no chance of joining it and being able to get in.

The World War 1 display

On the plus side, the show gardens seemed easier to access than at Chelsea and looked better in real life than they did on TV.  There was a fascinating World War One section with a schools' scarecrow competition and trenches showing how the soldiers grew plants. There were some fabulous stalls for laydeez in the Country Living Magazine marquee. All manner of "tut," from jewellery to clothes and oil paintings.

By 3.30 I decided to confront the traffic again but first called by at some of the vendors selling plants (very good idea to site these near the car park!). I bought a few plants including three salvias, a penstemon, a couple of grasses and a couple more erigeron.

I may well go again next year but definitely by public transport, and with a partner in crime (not a husband....) to make it more fun. And I realised that I really enjoyed last year's Hyde Hall flower show, the nearest RHS garden to us. It may have been modest, with no show gardens, but it was a delight to get around and some of the plants I bought are flourishing. So that's a date for the diary towards the end of July.

An unlikely star of the garden show

It's Ground Hog Day again. Yes, here's the garden in July.....an annual post!

My little garden will not win favour with those who think we should be painting with flowers and making garden creation an art form.  No, it's crammed full of plants that I love and it's not making any particular statements. I just do the best I can with a clay soil and a north facing plot  (which fortunately gets a few hours of sunshine a day).  The colour palette is primarily pink and white with a few red highlights.

This year's hits are the hollyhocks, seen on the left, by the fence, which started life being so badly mauled by snails I didn't think they would have a chance. They don't look like the usual hollyhocks but have fluffy pink balls of flower, like rosettes.

The unlikely star of the garden is erigeron karvinskianus, a tumbling daisy, part of the aster family, which is pink and white and also grows well in crevices.  I love the way it spills over my sleepers, softening the edges.

I am thrilled that a couple of tender trailing fuchsias from last year lived through the winter and are blooming again.

I have a few delights to follow in late summer:  gladioli, nerines and monarda, all for the first time.

And next week I have a day off work to visit the Hampton Court flower show. This will partly make up for the disappointment of missing Chelsea, when I had to spend the day in bed with food poisoning from oysters.

Erigeron

Salvia Hot Lips

Snobbery among the petunias

Alan Titchmarsh's comments in today's Telegraph reminded me how much snobbery there is in gardening.

It's not just which plants and styles of gardening are in or out, or whether you are a garden designer or garden creator or just a plain old gardener.


There's a big branch of snobbery among those who trained as horticulturalists, who paid their dues planting matchy-matchy petunias in municipal flower beds and learning the Latin names for everything.

As Titchmarsh said today, somewhat disingenuously, he was not going to hold his successor Monty Don’s “lack of training” against him. Monty Don, you see, may have written 20 books about gardening, and fronted gardening programmes for years, but to Titchmarsh and others who trained at Wisley, he's a presenter and not a gardener.

I could level the reverse accusation at Titchmarsh - he should stick at gardening and not presenting. I can't bear the programmes where he attempts to be a chat show host. 


Titchmarsh's peevish comments follow his demotion by the BBC for Chelsea Flower Show coverage. He was apparently asked to play second fiddle to Monty Don and declined. He was "hurt" by the decision. I'm not sure why. He stood down from the BBC's flagship gardening show Gardeners' World a few years ago and now presents the deplorable "Love Your Garden" on ITV. So why does he believe he should still be the BBC's top choice for Chelsea? He can't have everything.

This year, Titchmarsh has a show garden at Chelsea, his first since 1985. I'm not sure if his decision to have a show garden followed his "axing" by the BBC, but at least it allows him to show off his gardening expertise which Love Your Garden doesn't. And how heartening (I'm being ironic) that he will even allow himself to be interviewed by the BBC this year because "there is no point" in holding on to professional jealousy.

Really, all this gardening snobbery is so parochial and demeaning. The great thing about gardening is that it is highly personal and shouldn't be subjected to the dictats of a few pompous people who think they have a monopoly on taste, style and Latin.  Personally, I'm fed up with prairie planting and the same old "trendy" plants - alliums, agapanthus,irises, cornus and anything that looks like cow parsley. I'd like to see a garden designer at Chelsea brave enough to use unfashionable plants - chrysanths, marigolds, dianthus to name three - and to create the delicate, traditional English cottage garden that seems to be banned from the likes of Chelsea yet is the backbone of Britain's gardens.