I’m Chelsea’s BIGGEST fan
As he hosts BBC2’s Chelsea Flower Show coverage for the first time this May, Monty Don on what makes it so special
AT this time of year a flower show can seem a distant dream, but any of the 500- odd exhibitors at the Chelsea Flower Show in May will already be counting down the hours with mounting anxiety. All flower shows have their own charm, atmosphere and occasional problems. But this is different. ‘ Chelsea’ (as it is invariably known although its full name is ‘RHS Chelsea Flower Show’) is the Big One.
There are bigger shows (RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show is much larger) and shows at other times of year when there is more to display. Almost all other shows are less crowded, cheaper and easier to get to.
Chelsea is invariably crowded (although numbers are limited and the tickets could be easily sold twice over), the weather is often either wet and cold or blisteringly hot, parking is a nightmare and sometimes you have to crane through serried ranks to see much at all. Yet anyone who can possibly get hold of a ticket goes.
So what is it that makes Chelsea so special? It is the yardstick by which the garden designers, nurseries, professional and amateur gardeners and all other flower shows measure themselves. All the other RHS flower shows award medals, and the RHS repeatedly avows that the system of judging is identical in all shows, but a gold medal at Chelsea has a cachet like no other. You can talk the talk anywhere you like but if you want to walk the walk then you must walk it at Chelsea.
I am entering my fourth decade as a Chelseagoer and this year I will be fronting BBC2’s coverage for the first time – yet I am looking forward to it with the same enthusiasm I did for my first visit over 30 years ago when my wife and I were making our small but muchloved garden in London.
The biggest draw is the show gardens which, in my time, have expanded hugely in variety and type and become the focus of publicity. This is primarily because the huge budgets spent on the dozen or so major gardens attract the best designers who invariably put on a stunning display. However, there are also Artisan gardens, which must make artistic use of materials from a sustainable source, Fresh gardens that are intended to provoke and stimulate, and Generation gardens which highlight the changes to gardening over the past 100 years.
But although I visit the show gardens as eagerly as anyone, I love most of the Great Pavilion (although I miss the distinctive smell of canvas which went when the old floral marquee – all 3½ hectares of it – was replaced by the pavilion in 2000), filled with flowers grown by exhibitors from all over the world, as well as some family firms who have been showing at Chelsea for generations. This, rather than the glitz of the gardens, is the beating heart of Chelsea, where plants parade in every variation of perfection. Not one is for sale – although orders can be made – they are there simply to show us mere gardening mortals what, with immense skill, patience, ingenuity and perhaps a little luck, is possible.
The show is always held in the third week of May and this year’s, the 93rd since its inception 101 years ago, starts on May 19. This is the press day, when the main attractions – apart from the show gardens and horticultural displays – are the hundreds of celebrities eager both to see and be seen. Tuesday and Wednesday are reserved for members of the RHS and Thursday, Friday and Saturday are open to the general public. If you like gardens, plants or even just a celebration of the gardener’s art and craft then you must go and see for yourself. My advice is to get there early, wear a stout pair of shoes and a hat in case of excess rain or sun and adopt a crowd-tolerant frame of mind, but go. See you there!
For more information and tickets, visit www.rhs.org.uk