RHS Chelsea Flower Show
With the sun shining, the ice-creams and Pimms selling by the shedload, I had a look around the RHS Chelsea Flower Show for things crafty.
My camera sulking having been left at home, all images are courtesy of the Royal Horticultural Society.
I thought I could sew, prune and mulch with the best of them, but standing in the middle of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show I realise this is a delusion. It’s my first visit to the show and is far beyond my green-fingered understanding. It is truly beautiful, but all so perfect and regimented. If you listen closely you can hear one daffodil saying to the other ‘stop slouching, everybody’s looking’.
So what about the craft? Well there’s a mound of eccentric work and plenty of garden sculpture – a vast majority of that is animal-based, the height (or depth) of which was a cast iron, six-foot mouse in a tutu.
But surprisingly, the most talked about garden had the craftiest bent. Paradise in Plasticine was definitely the star of the show, a garden made entirely from Plasticine.
Fronted by Top Gear presenter James May, the garden was designed by Chris Collins, Jane McAdam Freud, Julian Fullalove and made up of contributions from school children and Chelsea Pensioners to professional model makers – although I defy you to differentiate who made what. A welcome frippery, the plasticine garden helped loosen the strict order that pervades the rows of delphiniums all around.
A total success – May clinches his gold medal.
But traditionalists need not worry; it wasn’t a real medal because it’s not considered a real garden. It’s plasticine, of course.
www.rhs.org.uk
