The highlight of my year is a visit to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. I love the astonishing creativity, the genius of the designers and growers and come home exhausted, but happy and inspired.
It wasn’t always thus. I wasn’t a gardener. Visiting the Flower Show was something that other people did. Then, a good friend who lived in London, bought tickets for an evening visit and my mind was blown. I’ve been going ever since.
Slowly, it occurred to me that gardens were great ways of telling stories. And back in 2021, I had the great privilege of project managing a garden for top designer Sarah Eberle at the Flower Show. That was followed by working with young designer Ollie Park on a garden at RHS Tatton Park two years later.
A prestigious gig
I shall still be talking about this when I’m in my dotage and would project manage or do the communications for another garden in a heartbeat. But this year’s Show was all about celebrating others’ success, so on Tuesday a gang of us set off to do just that. Believe me, it is a lot of walking. Unlike my village strolls, this meant battling the crowds in order to see beautiful views.
Sarah Eberle – who is the Usain Bolt of horticulture – was back at Chelsea with a garden for the Council for the Protection of Rural England. My friend Fran was leading her planting team, a prestigious gig if ever there was one.
Sarah has won more gold medals than any other designer, so we were hoping for gold, and sure enough the judges didn’t disappoint. We headed straight for her garden on arrival, despite calls for coffee from some in our party.
Filming was about to begin. The BBC will film several segments from each garden across the week. That will involve more people than you might imagine, a camera and a boom.
But here there were several cameras as well as the boom. ‘She’s going to win Best in Show,’ I said to my friends. They’re not given to believing me, and this was no exception. When two photographers with long lenses arrived, it was confirmed (to me at least) as this doesn’t happen in normal filming. I reiterated my case. My chums laughed.
Sarah Eberle did win Best in Show. We all cheered. I might have shed a tear.
We walked through the crowds to have a celebratory lunch, and then, three glasses of champagne to the good, headed off for Ollie Pike’s container garden for Whittard, the tea makers. This had also won a gold medal: astonishing for his first Chelsea garden. Ollie is still in his mid-twenties, but hugely talented. I’ve been saying for the last three years that he’s the future of horticulture. Now, he is the present. I might have shed another tear.
Then Fran had a phone call. If we hurried, we’d be allowed access to the winning garden, and she could talk us through it as she’d planted it. What an experience. This was a real behind-the-scenes explainer of the garden, its story and the plants.
There were more friends to visit in the grand marquee, and amongst the designers and publicists. There was more cheering and encouragement to be given.
Then, all of a sudden, we’d all walked too far and needed the comfort of tea and cake.
Back home that evening, my feet and ankles throbbed from walking on hard surfaces for much of the previous 12 hours, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. It had been the most enormous joy to celebrate the success and talent of others and cheer them on. My week has been enriched by being able to applaud them.