Rebuilding a nursery - Copton Ash

[Maggi Young]

Would you please post a link to that Kent HPS Chelsea blog, Tim?  I found it the other day but cannot seem to do so now.

[astragalus]

Maggi, I like your idea!  I have a vision of Max the magnificent chasing the rabbit while dragging the tree stump.  He is so incredibly strong.

[Maggi Young]

Maggi, I like your idea!  I have a vision of Max the magnificent chasing the rabbit while dragging the tree stump.  He is so incredibly strong.

Max could be multi-tasking on that, eh?   It would build his muscles even more!

[Maggi Young]

Would you please post a link to that Kent HPS Chelsea blog, Tim?  I found it the other day but cannot seem to do so now.

 Found it!  And a link there to the radio piece Tim mentions :
http://www.hpskent.co.uk/blog-posts/

[Tim Ingram]

Thanks for giving the link Maggi. Actually I have watched the first couple of Chelsea programmes hoping for a brief glance at the HPS display - there is a nice picture of the team with Rachel de Thame on the blog - but mostly these were about (wait for it) the outdoor Show gardens. Another nine and half hours of programming to go... so at some point they will probably crop up. Both Kevock and Jacques Amand stands were pictured and some pretty nice plants on these  .

[Maggi Young]

Tonight I've seen Avon Bulbs - with an interview with Alan Street,  Harperley Hall Farm's stand and quite a bit about  SRGC member Billy Carruthers  of Binny Plants - but mostly about their wonderful Paeonias.

[Maggi Young]

There is so much attention paid to the designers rather than the plants, even when the show  gardens are shown  on TV and that I find off-putting.  It is sad that  this should be the case.   I've been quite  horrified by the tale of the Dan Pearson garden - the one involving 300 tonnes of rock taken to and from Chatsworth. He said he wouldn't return to Chelsea unless it was for a garden that would continue - but at what cost to the environment with all that transportation around the country?  Not a very "green2  attitude it is?

This  is  quite a good blog post ...  getting a lot of stick from some circles I believe!
http://pots-and-polytunnels.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/chelsea-is-not-centre-of-world.html

[Tim Ingram]

I don't know what to say really because I have always enjoyed going to Chelsea when I had the opportunity simply because plants and gardening have been central to my understanding of the world for as long as I remember. I used to go as a student in London when Chelsea was a benefit of RHS membership - now it has become rather expensive, but it is an extraordinary event to bring together and make work. I've never been hugely drawn to the Show gardens because they seem divorced from actually making your own garden and learning about plants; they are more to do with prestige and position - but they can be extremely beautiful and artistically stimulating. Sometimes they seem overly moralistic as if we have to be told something we know already over and over again. We open our garden for charity - have done so for getting on for 30 years even when it was only just being first made - because gardens are about sharing what you do as much as about impressing someone. Fundamentally the Show gardens seem to be about building teams (no bad thing) to work to deadlines (sometimes unreasonable) but this is not what gardening is really about - at least as far as I see it. On the other hand it was hugely enjoyable and stimulating to be involved in making displays at Chelsea and that must be true for everyone, so in that sense it is a great experience and a valuable one. So there is an ambivalence there and quite a lot of this must be the feeling of being part of something and working with other people for your benefit and not necessarily that of everyone else and being judged by others. I will watch the coverage with as much interest as ever and wonder whether rock gardening and plantsman-ship might appear more on the horizon again and a little less of the glitz and glamour.

[astragalus]

Tim, for me your garden is never about impressing anyone.  It is a place to learn, while expressing yourself in the way you grow and place the plants you love together.  Every longtime gardener has a "friendship" garden - you walk around and remember who gave you this plant or that one or sent you seed.  It makes you recall all the gardening friends you have had, and realize that gardening is so much greater when you share what you have built, both with opening your garden to visitors and by giving plants.  I live in a country where plant shows are few and far between, but I understand that competitiveness is part of that venue.  Anywhere else in the gardening world it seems an oxymoron

[Maggi Young]

The Kent HPS  has won Silver Gilt at Chelsea
 http://www.hpskent.co.uk/chelsea-flower-show-2015/

Colin Moat of that team has posted this in  Facebook and Twitter
"Delighted that Roy Lancaster, the President of the Hardy Plant Society, was pleased with our Silver Gilt medal at Chelsea. Been a long slog but very proud of the result!"



 Kents HPS have done  very well

[tonyg]

I don't know what to say really because I have always enjoyed going to Chelsea when I had the opportunity simply because plants and gardening have been central to my understanding of the world for as long as I remember. I used to go as a student in London when Chelsea was a benefit of RHS membership - now it has become rather expensive, but it is an extraordinary event to bring together and make work. I've never been hugely drawn to the Show gardens because they seem divorced from actually making your own garden and learning about plants; they are more to do with prestige and position - but they can be extremely beautiful and artistically stimulating. Sometimes they seem overly moralistic as if we have to be told something we know already over and over again. We open our garden for charity - have done so for getting on for 30 years even when it was only just being first made - because gardens are about sharing what you do as much as about impressing someone. Fundamentally the Show gardens seem to be about building teams (no bad thing) to work to deadlines (sometimes unreasonable) but this is not what gardening is really about - at least as far as I see it. On the other hand it was hugely enjoyable and stimulating to be involved in making displays at Chelsea and that must be true for everyone, so in that sense it is a great experience and a valuable one. So there is an ambivalence there and quite a lot of this must be the feeling of being part of something and working with other people for your benefit and not necessarily that of everyone else and being judged by others. I will watch the coverage with as much interest as ever and wonder whether rock gardening and plantsman-ship might appear more on the horizon again and a little less of the glitz and glamour.

Tim, a very thoughtful reflection on several levels.  I've never been to Chelsea, never really felt drawn to all the glitz and showmanship.  I can see the attraction,would like to go one day just for the experience .... rather like I have been to Epsom for the Derby and Aintree for the National, but only the once!

Unlike you, I am not a very good gardener, but I think we share the passion for and curiosity about plants and how they grow.  Perhaps it is this that needs to be fostered in young and old gardeners alike? 

[Tim Ingram]

Tony - I've never really been drawn to the glitz and showmanship, but that might all change if I was involved in making a rock garden at Chelsea . When you see something done well it is obvious - not easy to achieve - but doesn't really involve these two words. There is a lot of this - things done well - at Chelsea and all that plantsman-ship and practical skill which underlies everything, but also that concentration on medals which after a while seems unnecessary, and even distorting, because they can lead to unreasonable expectations. It's interesting watching the BBC programmes because you can see the enthusiasm of the young couple who met at Wisley and are growing hardy violas and making their own nursery; the fascinating Islamic Garden which has an intellectual basis drawn from the Natural World and poetry and a different culture (but also it has to be said, wealth), and a good number of gardens with charitable connections. Then there is Dan Pearson's 'garden' which is wonderfully constructed but as he himself described, a herculean effort; as Anne says this the very antithesis of what a garden really is! (I know that the gardens are judged individually against their own brief but it would be disingenuous not to see competition there too). This is surely a result of that judging and emphasis on perfection which is unreal. Rebuilding the nursery here has been a bit like this, because life doesn't always go well, but there is limit to how much pressure you can put on yourself and how much can be imposed by outside expectations.

I don't know if I would agree with you that you are not a very good gardener because people are just as important as plants and can be cared for in similar ways - and curiosity about plants can lead in all sorts of directions.

[ichristie]

Hello, I have visited Chelsea for around 10 years not every year but quite often and despite like other I do not like the showmanship and the over estimated glitz about the show gardens or the Floral hall. I however really look at the plants where I always learn something new with different colours and flowering times we must always keep an open mind to this for me it is very well worth a visit,  cheers Ian the Christie kind

[tonyg]

Hello, I have visited Chelsea for around 10 years not every year but quite often and despite like other I do not like the showmanship and the over estimated glitz about the show gardens or the Floral hall. I however really look at the plants where I always learn something new with different colours and flowering times we must always keep an open mind to this for me it is very well worth a visit,  cheers Ian the Christie kind

Cheers Ian - I'd certainly come away with many ideas of plants and plantings too ....... then I'd be sure to run into trouble finding a place to grow them   

[Maggi Young]

Tim,
How nice to see that column from you in the RHS magazine, The Garden - June 2015  page 23.

John Grimshaw's  article gave some commonsense too - page 19.