Gardens on Steroids
Many know I have an interest in gardening so there was one thing I had to do while in the UK and that was visit the world famous Chelsea Flower Show. Bigger than any rock concert, tickets are sold out months before the day so luckily I went on line and purchased my ticket to the steroids of gardening.
Leaving the family at home I headed to London for the weekend. Walking to the show was no different to going to a rock concert apart from the audience shuffling in the walking frames and everyone remaining a polite distance from each other. As you walked there was the constant whispers from 70 year old scalpers “wana bya chelseee tickets?”, “how much forya ticket?”.
Entering the show the first thing that strikes you is the orderliness. Surprisingly, it was very easy to get around and they obviously limit the number of people. I guess this is to prevent the mad push of obsessive green-fingered pensioners falling over each other and breaking their hips.
First port of call was the outside gardens. An amazing series of displays, each meticulously tendered, flowers in full bloom, weedless, all traces of any rouge snail vaporised. They say some have spent up to $1 million to make the gardens – that is $200,000 PER DAY so don’t even think you can reproduce this at home. There was the “Cancer Garden” with a 30 metre long oak sculpture resembling a string of DNA, the “Relationships Garden” based on a farm workers cottage garden, “Sand and Ice” exploring the extremes of climate change, and other strange named ones including “Garden of Transience”, “Scent of a Roman”, “A Pleasance for the Rose and Lily Queen”, Lust for Life” and “Tufa Tea”.
But the best had to be the “Australian Garden”. Not because of its unique use of native plants, but because of the designer who spent most of his time chatting up good looking girls in the crowd, telling jokes and demonstrating the true larrikin in us all.
With all my senses in overload it was time to completely overdose and enter the Great Pavillion. Here your eyes are overloaded with every imaginable colour as flowers compete for each other in trying to be the most dazzling. Realising it was time to get out of there before the mind thinks it is on acid, or I consider changing to a Blue-rinse hairdo, I headed off to catch up with Doug (an old college) from Parramatta for dinner and a good lie down.
Leaving the family at home I headed to London for the weekend. Walking to the show was no different to going to a rock concert apart from the audience shuffling in the walking frames and everyone remaining a polite distance from each other. As you walked there was the constant whispers from 70 year old scalpers “wana bya chelseee tickets?”, “how much forya ticket?”.
Entering the show the first thing that strikes you is the orderliness. Surprisingly, it was very easy to get around and they obviously limit the number of people. I guess this is to prevent the mad push of obsessive green-fingered pensioners falling over each other and breaking their hips.
First port of call was the outside gardens. An amazing series of displays, each meticulously tendered, flowers in full bloom, weedless, all traces of any rouge snail vaporised. They say some have spent up to $1 million to make the gardens – that is $200,000 PER DAY so don’t even think you can reproduce this at home. There was the “Cancer Garden” with a 30 metre long oak sculpture resembling a string of DNA, the “Relationships Garden” based on a farm workers cottage garden, “Sand and Ice” exploring the extremes of climate change, and other strange named ones including “Garden of Transience”, “Scent of a Roman”, “A Pleasance for the Rose and Lily Queen”, Lust for Life” and “Tufa Tea”.
But the best had to be the “Australian Garden”. Not because of its unique use of native plants, but because of the designer who spent most of his time chatting up good looking girls in the crowd, telling jokes and demonstrating the true larrikin in us all.
With all my senses in overload it was time to completely overdose and enter the Great Pavillion. Here your eyes are overloaded with every imaginable colour as flowers compete for each other in trying to be the most dazzling. Realising it was time to get out of there before the mind thinks it is on acid, or I consider changing to a Blue-rinse hairdo, I headed off to catch up with Doug (an old college) from Parramatta for dinner and a good lie down.
2 comments:
James, I am sure there is a Magazine out there somewhere only too eager to print some of your clever stories - why not start with a Garden mag. on your Chelsea visit - just send it in. They would "luv" something from and Aussie's perspective.!! From whom do you get your writing skills?
Not sure who but thanks - Hope people are enjoring our little weekly journey through life on the other side of the world.
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