What a farce Chelsea Flower show is!

But I Just Love It.
What a week this is for gardeners wall to wall TV coverage of The Chelsea Flower Show .
Gardening theatre at it's best.
Obscene amounts of money spent on show business gardens .
Well we can grab ideas from it ,we can see what is possible......what if I had a million pounds.

It fascinates me how you have to have a story for your showgarden some incredible complicated visions.
Did you note that Chris Beardshaw was not happy as he recieved his silver guilt medal ........."those self elected judges"
I suspect he will now win the people's choice as he said his garden was for gardeners.......not judges.
What about the best in show ,another complicated story......sorry judges you got it wrong again.

Well I shall continue watching and enjoying every moment.

This great week for gardeners culminates in the main event ,the opening of Shiney's garden to us mere mortals.
What a week.
Footnote did you see how Joanna Lumley positively purrrrrrrrrd at Monty.

 

I am enjoying Chelsea......for me its about the plants, esp what's new, but its a great show

 

Anybody been?
Anybody going?

 

Despite doing stands at Chelsea many, many years ago I just cannot watch it. I have an aversion to 'TV gardeners'.
Standing in the main marquee for 6 or 7 hours in the heat with thousands of visitors walking through kicking up dust by the end of the day I couldn't hardly speak I had swallowed so much of it.

 

Never been to Chelsea and would like to go but I do like Hampton Court Palace....been the last 5 years! Absolutely love getting different plants and taking photos of gardens to get ideas to pinch.

The only thing I don't like it all the people. Lol. Hate it being crammed. I usually go early on Friday and leave by 1pm as it's just too much.

Really liked the garden on tonight based around depression-good interpretation. Also liked the cancer research garden-very clever idea and I thought it was planted up lovely.

 

A spin off with growers talking about their plants would be great.......an hour prog for every group of plants? Is that so unreasonable?
Those huge "builds" look fantastic but its about the plants for me

 

I have never been to a flower show . I really would like to go to Chelsea , but the picture of the crowds reminds me of going into a Wembley cup final . I don't think I could stand that for 4 hours. The big show in the north of England is Tatton park , that gets very very busy as well. I may try the Southport Flower show this is late in the year and only 14 miles from us . I'll try and find when the off peak times are .

 

It is the same amount of tickets year in year out which the RHS would not increase so instead a few years ago they extended the show, used to finish on the Friday, to include the Saturday. Same amount of tickets but over 6 days instead of 5.

 

I took my young son and husband with me and my boy really enjoyed it. Not that it has started his interest in it. Very, very crowded and too expensive and the weather was awful, quite unlike this year's. Now too much conceptualisation / claptrap glorified .. M&G sponsors the show and hence James Basson's M&G garden won gold. It is one of the most awful of gardens, same as last year's Hole in a block of rock. Too much building work involved, and I used to see some flowers and went WOW.. I'm going to hunt that down .. eg Trollius Chinensis.. but this year, it is a wash out. Shame that all the presenters have to acquiesce .. Oh, what a lovely garden.. Joe Swift is one of the worst... Rant over! LOL!

PS I give Chris Beardshaw a gold!

 

Just a slight hint alp? You dont like some of the gardens :rasp:
I tend to agree though......just a tad too much "meaning" I think.
Tatton is better. Our local and county shows feature plants....they are what we go there for

 

Yes, too much concrete and too many facsimile copies of nature. I hope we can go back to gardening for gardening rather than translating or embedding message. Never in a million years would I think that block has anything to do with quarrying! More like WWI cemetery ..

 

£100 for a non-RHS member ticket laughable really, isn't it?