Gardens
That's entertainment!
Ursula Buchan
There are two reasons why gardeners will almost kill to get to the Chelsea Flower Show each May. The first is that we receive an addictive fix of euphoria when sur- rounded by so much scent, colour, rarity and exoticism, and is a perfectly good rea- son for making the annual effort. The sec- ond is that we think we will learn a great deal by being near so much skilful and ingenious design and culture, but this is based on a false premise.
We are continually told by newspapers and television that we will gain 'ideas to take home and use in your own garden'. Garden designers and nurserymen obvious- ly believe it or they would not take such pains to 'theme' their show gardens and displays. But it is largely a mirage. For, unless the theme (s single-mindedly laid on with a garden trowel, it will be lost on us. Most visitors to Chelsea (apart from the tiresome minor celebrities over whom it is hard not to trip) are part-time, amateur gardeners, not recent graduates of courses in garden design. How on . earth, peering over the heads of 42,000 co-religionists, can they get to grips with some subtleties of interpretation, especially those introduced to enhance the profile of sponsors?
Take this year's Chelsea show as a pretty average example. There were some intrigu- ingly entitled show gardens: a 'Garden of Stories' (Daily Mirror), 'A Garden of All Ages' (Action for Blind People), 'Across the Generations' (Help the Aged), 'The Touch of Midas' (Numould and Pershore College), 'The Azzarro 9 Garden' (Sunday Times). However, you could not guess that 'Madame, with the compliments of the gentleman over there.'
something of the rich history of plant col- lecting was being shown to you in 'the Gar- den of Stories', nor yet why Midas's touch required broken balustrading in the Per- shore garden. For those of us who have never even heard of Azzarro 9, the fact that 'the feeder fountain spilled on to a dif- fuser reminiscent of the shape of a per- fume bottle' was altogether too subtle.
Moreover, the desire to make a sophisti- cated design point can lead to errors in planting. There were one or two notable dog's breakfasts, where rhododendron jos- tled rose and marguerite smothered astilbe. I hope that these schemes did not end up in too many notebooks.
The themes which were simple, and hor- ticulturally apposite, worked the best. The National Asthma Campaign's 'Low Aller- gen Garden', for example, which was entirely planted with species unlikely to bring on asthma and hay fever, was not to be sneezed at. Equally successful were the `dune' garden of wild maritime flowers, from Countryside Wildflowers; the 'drought-resistant' garden, from Merrist Wood; two 'woodland' gardens, from the Daily Telegraph and Bridgemere/W.I.; the replica of James Pulham's Victorian rock cliff at Waddesdon Manor (Harpers and Queen) and Count?), Living's 'A Celebration of Gertrude Jekyll'. These were sufficiently clear-cut to be genuinely enlightening.
It is not always possible to make some- thing even of the stands in the Marquee. If this was your first Chelsea you could not know the tricks that were being played on you: for example, that there are no crocus- es which will flower at the same time as lilies. The juggling with the seasons which sees snowdrops flower with roses is a bravura example of the nurseryman's skill, and I salute it as such, but it hardly helps anyone to plan their garden.
Of course, there were some straightfor- ward and informative stands. Mattocks suc- ceeded in their attempt to show us what you can do with their `groundcover' roses, namely, use them in hanging baskets and as standards; Blooms of Bressingham and Notcutts both showed plants for different soils and aspects, and the Alpine Garden Society displayed alpines which grow trI woodland. The problem in the Marquee Is remembering what it is that you have seen, a moment after you have seen it, when car- nivorous plants clamour for attention with clematis, and Iceland poppies nod at ferns. Because this show is 'Chelsea', it is easy to be overwhelmed, even misled, by Its splendour. Like urchins pressing our noses up against the ballroom window, we are fascinated by the colour, life and accom- plishment of it all, but we are not too sure what the toffs are up to. But the fact is that the toffs are not always sure, either. Onee you accept that Chelsea is not necessarily the place to learn about gardening and garden-making, you can settle happilY to the serious and worthwhile business of being entertained by it.
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