Late Chelsea implications
Some will benefit, but others will be missing, says Peter
POSTPONING this year’s Chelsea Flower Show from late May to the last week of September has really thrown all the balls in the air. There are exhibitors whose specialisms are completely out of season – Johnny Walker’s daffodils immediately come to mind – while others, including Jon Wheatley’s dahlias, are in natural season.
Speaking to Raymond Evison, I hear he plans to cut all of his May show clematis back and get regrowth in flower for the autumn. Similarly, Simon Blackmore will cut back Blackmore & Langdon show delphiniums in May, and feed and water well to get new shoots into flower for September. The May cancellation was very frustrating for Blackmore & Langdon, as they had been growing their begonias under lights in heated greenhouses since last November.
It was even more frustrating for Paul Harris, the Kent hosta specialist, who had planned a large Chelsea display in 2020 around a pond of exhibition Koi carp, only to have last year’s show cancelled – and again, this year, delayed too late for his hostas. Paul is now reviewing to see if a move to Hampton Court Palace Flower Show is possible.
We had prepared for a possible second Chelsea cancellation and planned to stage our May Pyramid exhibit, with new plant launches, in duplicate at the RHS Garden Hyde Hall. The latter will now be the launch pad for new Verbena ‘Margaret’s Memory’, alongside its parent, ‘Seabrook’s Lavender’.
‘Margaret’s Memory’ is a pink flowering sport (mutation) found by Christine and Robin Grant of Cowes, Isle of Wight. Cuttings from this colour break have come true, giving two shades of this pretty hardy, short-lived perennial. My royalties from the sale of these plants in 2021 will be going to the Alzheimer’s Society, to help fund research into the cruel disease my late wife Margaret suffered for 10 years.
“Verbena ‘Margaret’s Memory’ is a pinkflowering sport”