Blooming Good End to Winter’s Ills
In the best of times, the Chelsea Flower Show is a rite of spring heralding the end of winter and the birth of a summer of garden parties for the well-heeled and gardening for the, well, everyone else.
After this worst of winters, however, the floral extravaganza was more than a marker in the British cycle of life. It was salvation to the sensory-deprived.
To enter the Royal Horticultural Society’s world of verdant gardens and heaving flower arrangements this year was to surface from bottomless months of gray, inhaling great gulps of life-giving color.
The fuchsia shrubs and crimson lilies turned the blood from winter blue to red. Salmon roses brought a flush to pale British cheeks. Maybe it was a reflection, but suddenly everyone looked more alive.
Decked out in their dapper best with straw hats for men, pearls and handbags for women, visitors were transported by blooms named “Acapulco” and “California” and captivated by a yellow tulip called “Emmanuelle.” There was definitely a spring in the flower lovers’ step.
“Look at the quality of those plants. They’re superb,” Barbara Ravenscroft enthused over a display from the St. Andrew Flower Arrangement and Garden Club in Jamaica.
In Britain, where the winter wardrobe ranges, broadly speaking, from charcoal to black, this gardener from North Yorkshire had donned a peacock blue suit and burgundy jacket for the start of the flower show last week.
There was the slightest hint of envy in her voice as she admired exotic orange-and-purple birds of paradise, green-and-yellow ginger leaves and red heliconia lobster claws. The flowers were surrounded by tropical fruits--tamarind and jackfruit, plantains and ackee.
Kent gardener Allison Wainman, a Liberal Democratic candidate for Parliament, helped her fellow horticulturists from across the Atlantic. “There are temperate plants as well as tropical,” she said of Jamaica. “Look up there on top of their hut. You see the azaleas and you think, ‘Surely not!’ But yes, they do actually grow there.”
Many of the home-grown gardeners showing at Chelsea had wondered if their plants would survive this wettest and gloomiest British winter in more than 250 years--since long before the Royal Horticultural Society’s first flower show in the mid-19th century. For weeks into the spring, their bulbs simply had refused to bloom.
“There wasn’t enough light to bring ‘em out,” said Pam Cross of the Wilford Bulb Co. in Leicestershire.
And then a sudden warm burst of a weekend in early May drew out the flowers, and the flowers brought Britons out to a gloriously sunny, sold-out show. More than 170,000 professional and amateur gardeners were expected to view what has come to be seen as the gold standard of flower and gardening shows--the measure to which all others are held.
“The Brits are the best. As horticulturists, the Dutch come close, but for sheer garden creation, the whole package, the British are extraordinary,” said Barbara Damrosch, an organic gardener from Maine.
Her “American Organic Garden,” dotted with sunflowers and surrounded by a white picket fence, was modest by the standards of some of her neighbors. Down the path, for instance, was Prince Charles’ showpiece, called “The Carpet Garden,” which incorporated geometric designs inspired by some of the Middle Eastern carpets at his Highgrove residence.
Across the way, “The Garden of Tranquillity” was the contribution of Sheik Zayed ibn Sultan al Nuhayyan, president of the United Arab Emirates. It was inspired by the early morning flight of the falcon, a species he is dedicated to preserving.
There was also “A Theatrical Garden,” sponsored by the Evening Standard newspaper, and “A Real Japanese Garden” from the Daily Telegraph.
But while princes and newspaper owners may be the only ones who can afford the estimated $150,000 to $300,000 it costs to assemble a show garden for Chelsea, gardening is considered the most popular hobby among all classes of Britons.
“Gardening is the No. 1 pastime in the United States too, but that includes mowing the lawn,” Damrosch said. “Here you get cabdrivers who are passionate about their dahlias.”
For old-time gardeners, the hobby is entertainment and therapy in one, a pleasant way to pass time without wasting it and a remedy for all sorts of ills.
“When my children were young and I was in a bad temper, they used to say, ‘For goodness’ sakes, Mummy, go out and do some weeding,’ ” Ravenscroft said.
“It’s better than a sleeping tablet,” said Peter Wood, who writes for the Royal National Rose Society’s quarterly magazine, the Rose.
Wood was admiring the nostalgic “Lifetime Care Garden,” sponsored by Help the Aged. It was a replica of an English cottage and 1960s garden that included a Mini Cooper in the garage, an apron and nylon stockings on the clothesline and an elm tree in the front yard.
For many new gardeners, horticulture is trendy. In a sign of the times, the “Contemporary Man’s Garden” was sponsored by a shampoo for thinning hair and, needless to say, did not have a lawn to mow or a toolshed to pick through.
For gardeners such as these, Chelsea is a place to see and be seen. Garden designers are like star chefs, and the flower show is a cross between the Cannes Film Festival--with a crush of photographers--and the Michelin guide to what is in. (Minimalism and stone landscaping apparently are; terracing is not.)
While viewing the wares last week, they will have consumed about 3,000 bottles of champagne, 8,000 bottles of wine, 60,000 pieces of cake, 110,000 cups of tea and coffee and 28,000 finger sandwiches.
“You know who’s supposed to be coming, that American, what’s her name, Martha Stewart,” said Cleve West, designer of Merrill Lynch Investment Managers’ “Garden for Learning.”
Merrill Lynch not only sponsored a garden but became the first sponsor of the entire flower show, with its logo tagged onto the bottom of the Royal Horticultural Society’s trademark green flag.
Britons often are ambivalent about U.S. involvement in and corporate sponsorship of their traditional cultural events, but this one raised only a little fuss. Perhaps that is because some critics have already written off Chelsea.
“From the show sponsors--Merrill Lynch--through to the show gardens--almost all sponsored by businesses--and the individual nursery stands, it exists only to sell things,” gardening expert Monty Don wrote in the Observer newspaper. “If you want to see the latest lawn mower, variety of iris or type of flowerpot, then Chelsea is your place. . . . The truth of Chelsea is that it is a trade show pretentiously dressed up as a palace garden party.”
Maybe, but it is a riotously colorful show to end a drab winter.
