RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2008 Blogs
The full listing of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2008 blogs can be found here.
Growing for Chelsea
It may be cold and frosty at night outside on the nursery, but for the favoured few plants selected to be grown on for Chelsea it is warm and cosy inside our 'Chelsea' or 'Rubrum' houses.
The new stems on the mare's tail Equisetum hymenale are moving very quickly upwards now with the longer days and are very striking in both their form and upright habit.
Pots and preparations
The nursery is very busy with customers orders, we have just had a late shipment of our special elm trees in from the USA with all the fun that that entails and of course now that the show plants we potted for Chelsea are in active growth the first successes as well as casualties are becoming evident.
Our 7th year at Chelsea
This will be our 7th year at Chelsea and, although we have always exhibited in the Grand Pavilion, as we will again this year, for 2008 we thought we might make things even more interesting by jointly undertaking a small garden in conjunction with Paul Hensey of Elysium Design. He takes a modern approach to garden design with a frequent, and imaginative use of grasses that we have long admired.
Of course, Chelsea in May is a very silly time of year for a grass nursery to be showing its wares. It is now well-known that one of the most important contributions grasses can make to any gardens is to extend the season of interest. They do this naturally as the great majority, of deciduous grasses in particular, are at their peak later in the season-long after May has passed. Sillier still then to commit to not one, but two projects at this year's show!