Chelsea Flower Show 2011

[Maggi Young]

I understand that the build of the AGS garden, designed by Ray,  was lead again by John Humphries, so well done to John as well as to Ray and the others who will have helped to make this super display.

[Peter Maguire]

If you google 'Dianthus carthusianorum' then click on the 'images for...' result, there are many pictures, mostly in pink, but some a deeper, redder colour. I suppose you would have to buy it in flower to check you had the colour form you wanted.

[Maggi Young]

Nice photo of the Scutellaria laetoviolacea on the AGS display....... that species was on the show bench in Aberdeen last Saturday, from Roma, I think.

[vivienr]

At the BBC's Chelsea website you can tell them what you would like to see more coverage of during the week (they mentioned this on last night's programme). I have already made my request for a better look at the AGS stand.

www.bbc.co.uk/chelsea/coverage/contact-us.shtml

It does look like a good show this year.

[Neil]

Regarding the Dianthus,  are sure it was from the Laurent perrier garden??  because in the Daily Telegraph garden there is Dianthus cruentus which is very red and quite tall in it.  Crocus.co.uk supplied the plants to both gardens by the way.


 If it is then the only places I have found it, who have stock are

http://www.rareplants.de/shop/product.asp?strParents=&CAT_ID=678&P_ID=8319
http://www.pflanzen-vielfalt.de/product.php?products_id=910105


World's End Gardeen Nursery say they have it arriving soon

[Giles]

..if it is cruentus that anybody wants, I've got some seed of that....

[Tim Ingram]

Having not gone to the Chelsea Flower Show this year it is wonderful to see these images so quickly on the website. Stellera seems to be a Scottish speciality - I remember writing to Ron McBeath about it years ago, and eventually grew a single plant from seed which lasted three or four years but eventually gave up the ghost. It is very exciting to see a plant on Stella and David Rankin's display. It would be great if all the good comments about the AGS display could translate into really good programme on tv about alpines. Maybe this will come.

Re. Dianthus carthusianorum - I have grown this in the vivid red form and it is relatively short-lived but does set quite a bit of seed. However, under the same name at Kew and elsewhere I have seen a larger flowered pink plant with nothing of the same pizzazz! Another name I have come across is D. ferruginius which sounds as though it may be more accurate. Unfortunately I have lost the plant for some years and it would be great to get it back again. We used to sell it on the nursery so there may be growers who have kept it going.

[Peter Maguire]

Just been watching a recording of today's daytime programme and they (Andy Sturgeon) refered to the dianthus as Dianthus cruentus.
When you google that name, the pictures look more like the plants on the TV!

[Maggi Young]

Sandy Leven isn't home fron Chelsea yet. He was flying to/from London City airpot. Told to go away and comer back today there are still no flights so he and another chap he met at the airport have hired a car and are driving back to Scotland. 

[Maggi Young]

Having not gone to the Chelsea Flower Show this year it is wonderful to see these images so quickly on the website. Stellera seems to be a Scottish speciality - I remember writing to Ron McBeath about it years ago, and eventually grew a single plant from seed which lasted three or four years but eventually gave up the ghost. It is very exciting to see a plant on Stella and David Rankin's display. It would be great if all the good comments about the AGS display could translate into really good programme on tv about alpines. Maybe this will come.

  Stellera does pretty well in Lancashire, too, Tim  ... see Darren's plant here: http://www.srgc.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=6565.msg202576#msg202576

It would be great if all the good comments about the AGS display could translate into really good programme on tv about alpines. Maybe this will come.

We can but hope but knowing a little about the workings of the BBC, I would not hold my breath.  
There are hundreds of complaints over the years on the BBC website about Gardener's World, for instance, and they have had little impact.
Some of the finest programmes about alpines were presented years ago by the late Geoffrey Smith.... nowadays the BEEB seems to think that sort of thing too "specialised"  

[Peter Maguire]

nowadays the BEEB seems to think that sort of thing too "specialised"

I wouldn't say that about all sections of the BBC; since discovering I can record 'The Beechgrove Garden' on our Sky box, I've become a regular gardening programme viewer again.

[DaveM]

Pics of John Amand's Gold exhibit .....

Lots of lilies, some frits, arisaemas, cypripediums, pleiones and much else in a mossy woodland setting. Never seen so many cyps!! wonderful!

[Maggi Young]

So pleased that Big John got Gold again. My connection is being awkward and I cannot enlarge the pictures so I'll give up and try tomorrow!
Thanks, David!!

[Darren]

Tim & Maggi - my Stellera originally came from the Rankins and was bought from their stand on our visit to the Perth SRGC show about 6 years ago. It seems to be no trouble here. It is in a clay pot plunged in a frame. I've never repotted it - I just change the top few cm of compost every year. I do put a cover on the frame in winter but don't think it necessary and last year I think it let the plant get too dry in late winter/early spring and the flowers aborted - every single one!

John Forrest in Blackpool grew it very successfully for many years also.

[mark smyth]

what about that new Anemone ?nemerosa/apennina x Anemone summer flowering specie Wild Swan with blue backed white flowers. I want it.