Events

RHS London February Flower Show

All images Tim Sandall/Toplinc Imaging

Snowdrop Spectacular In Central London

This month's flower show at Westminster provided a colourful relief from the current cold weather and worries about London congestion charges.

Visitors enjoying a breath of spring at the RHS February Show.

Colourful bulbs glowed like gemstones among darker mosses and leaves, making a bright contrast with drifts of pure white snowdrops or with interesting ferns.

Star of the show was a Gold Medal winning display of snowdrops staged by bulb specialists Foxgrove Plants. As well as large, vigorous varieties, excellent for bulking up in a garden, Foxgrove also exhibited a range of curios such as ‘Wendy’s Gold’ (left) where the normally green flowerparts are golden yellow, and the bizarre-looking ‘South Hayes’ (below) whose outer tepals turn outwards, like a lamp shade, and are streaked with green.

Bulb merchants provided the brightest displays, best of which was Broadleigh Gardens (left) who received a Gold for their wonderful collection of crocus, dwarf iris, cyclamen and early miniature daffodils.

Cyclamen coum, like these, were included in most of the bulb exhibits.

The other plant exhibitor to strike gold was Dibleys nurseries, famous for their begonias, streptocarpus and members of the African violet family.

Aside from plants, the February Show is also well known for its exhibition of botanical art, and this year, no fewer than twenty entrants hung selections of their work. The most eye-catching of these were of onion and garlic cultivars, on strings, painted by Rosie Sanders (left). Her watercolours are so life-like that one could almost smell the onions!

A Gold also went to Kay Rees Davies for her accurate and sensitive depictions of Streptocarpus species whose foliage was particularly life-like.

Here are the winning results.

Gold

Broadleigh Gardens: Cyclamen, snowdrops, crocuses & irises
Dibleys Nurseries: Begonias & gesneriads
Foxgrove Plants: Cultivar & specie snowdrops
Lincluden Nursery: Conifers

Silver-Gilt Flora

Avon Bulbs: Early spring flowering bulbs, galanthus, iris, crocus & hellebores
Burncoose Nurseries: Trees, shrubs & other ornamental plants
Edrom Nursery: Spring flowering bulbs & associated plants
Long Acre Plants: Spring flowering perennials & ferns
P W Plants: Hardy bamboos & associated plants
Potterton & Martin: Alpines & dwarf bulbs in a woodland garden
Sadlers Gardens: Restios
Brian & Pearl Sulman: Scented leaf pelargoniums
Trevena Cross Nurseries: Southern Hemisphere plants

Silver Flora

Bluebell Arboretum & Nursery: Trees & shrubs
Choice Landscapes: Conifers, pines, spring bulbs & alpines
Hardy's Cottage Garden Plants: Spring herbaceous perennials
Potash Nursery: Primroses
Southcombe Gardens: Willows for stem colour
Trehane Nursery: Camellias & pieris
Wilford Bulb Co Ltd: Hybrid lilies

Silver Grenfell

NAFAS: Some other spring

Bronze Flora

The Botanic Nursery: Winter flowering shrubs, early spring perennials & evergreens
W E Th Ingwersen Ltd: Spring flowering alpines & bulbs
Pennard Plants: Bamboos & phormums for winter & early spring
Rotherview Nursery: Camellias
Rougham Hall Nurseries: Cut flower hardy perennials

Art awards

Gold

Kay Rees-Davies: Paintings of streptocarpus in watercolour & pencil
Rosie Sanders: Watercolour paintings of onions & garlic
Jane Wright: Watercolour paintings of nuts, fruits & seeds

Silver-Gilt Grenfell

Isobel Bartholomew: Gladioli
Joanna Heneker: Watercolour paintings of flowering plants from The National Botanic Gardens of Wales
Annika Silander-Hokerberg: Watercolour paintings of roses
Aurora Tazza: Pictures of citrus fruits in watercolour & gouache
Brenda Watts: Watercolour paintings of trees

Silver Grenfell

Gillian Dudley-Smith: Watercolour paintings of fruits of Ness Gardens, on velum
Stella Hewitt: Pencil drawings & watercolour paintings of culinary herbs
Mrs Patricia Newman: Drawings of Clematis
Dolly Norledge: Pictures of bark, leaves & fruit on vellum
Margareta Pertl: Pictures of Orchids in pencil & watercolour
Cyndy Silver: Watercolour paintings of carnivorous plants
Eriko Tosaki: Watercolour paintings
Kathryn Wood: Watercolour paintings of wild & naturalised plants from Canada

Bronze Grenfell

Sri K Benham: Watercolour paintings of Cucurbitaceae
Hannelore Blanchard: Pictures of unusual vegetables in pencil
Anita Walsmit Sachs-Jansen: Watercolour paintings of garden flowers through the season