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Things you shouldn't miss at this year's show
Flowers are the best medicine
With a recent study revealing that Britain is less happy than in the 1950s and Conservative Party leader David Cameron putting happiness on the political agenda, the RHS is prescribing a large dose of ‘floral medicine’ and the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show will help boost the nation’s happiness levels.
Studies into the benefits of gardening and contact with plants has led experts to recommend a 20-minute daily allowance of exposure to plants to maintain health and well-being, reduce stress levels, increase concentration and productivity, and improve mood. Visitors to the RHS event will be able to enjoy exposure to hundreds of thousands of blooms for a full day and leave on a natural high. Eight marquees will be full of hundreds of the UK’s top nurseries, rose growers, florists and National Collection holders.
The Weleda Garden, designed by Anny Konig, has been designed specifically to improve mood using features such as cascading water, rustling bamboos, medicinal herbs and warm stone to create an uplifting and revitalising garden. Calm, a small garden designed by Alan Smith of Barleywood Designs, is a relaxing space filled with textured greens, simple white flowers and trickling water. The calming chamomile plant is popular this year as it features in several of the show gardens. This year’s show will also feature five tranquil water gardens, a unique category to the show.
Happiness can also be achieved through healthy eating and visitors can get their fill of seasonal fruit and vegetables in the Growing & Showing Marquee over the show’s final weekend. The marquee will be full of dozens of entries in the amateur growers’ competition, a special container planting display from gardeners at RHS Garden Wisley, and exhibits from the Dorset Blueberry Company, The Garlic Farm from the Isle of Wight and the British Tomato Growers Association. Culinary herbs can be found here from Newlands Nursery and the famous Jekka’s Herb Farm in the Floral Marquees.
Loved up
Those who love gardening go to the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, and this year’s show is shaping up to be full of love!
Visitors will get be able to get an eyeful of Wayne Richards’ garden The Danger of Need, one of five gardens in the new Conceptual Gardens category which is showcasing innovative and challenging design from new designers. Visitors will be invited to spy on Adam and Eve, played by two actors, inside the lushly-planted garden which is surrounded by a wall of peep holes and television screens transmitting the scene from inside. Ground Force presenter Tommy Walsh has designed a small garden with a bold theme for Bayer Healthcare - Senses StimulatED. The garden embodies the focus of the campaign SortED in 10 which aims to challenge the taboos of impotency, or erectile dysfunction (ED). The garden is stylish with plants known for their aphrodisiac qualities, while providing a haven for couples to rekindle romance.
Trevor Tooth has taken the theme of love and relationships one step further with a show garden, Love, Life & Regeneration, inspired by his one-year old son. The garden illustrates the personal journey Trevor has taken on becoming a father. Those who prefer a little subtlety with their romance will like Fran Forster’s design, The Perfumed Garden. The garden is in honour of Jean Patou, the famous Parisian couturier and creator of Jean Patou fragrances including Joy a scent made from rose and jasmine.
Die-hard romantics will be seduced by the heady aroma of Britain’s largest annual gathering of roses in full bloom inside the Festival of Roses marquee. This year, visitors can see around a dozen new roses alongside favourites from the UK’s best rose growers, and be some of the first to see the Rose of the Year 2007.
The home of container planting
Hampton Court Palace Flower Show is fast becoming the home of container planting inspiration. For those with a patio, small front garden, balcony or only a windowsill, there is no excuse not to grow your own food, attract wildlife and add colour and interest. New category, Inspiring Spaces, will feature a host of practical container ideas for small and awkward spaces in the garden. Fruit and vegetables feature strongly in the 12 2x2m plots demonstrating that you do not need a big garden to grow your own fresh produce. Brighton & Hove City Council will be exhibiting Edible/Drinkable, with troughs filled with edible blueberry, lemongrass, trailing tomato and nasturtium and a bamboo frame supporting a ‘drinkable’ grape vine. White Row Farm Plant and Gift Shop of Somerset will be bringing a taste of farm life to the show with Farm and Garden incorporating hops, trailing tomatoes and strawberries set in rustic feeding troughs.
Some ‘Sunshine’ for Hampton Court
The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, will be exhibiting a dry garden designed by Paul Stone. With predictions of severe water shortages this summer, Ken Livingstone is working with the RHS to launch a London-wide campaign to highlight to gardeners that water is a precious resource and, while still producing beautiful gardens, we need to be more water efficient. The Mayor’s show garden will demonstrate how to create and maintain an attractive garden with minimal water use. The garden features Mediterranean plants and drought-tolerant vegetables, wildlife-friendly features such as an insect ‘hotel’ and wormery, and several practical water-saving ideas to copy at home.
Grow for the Show
The Growing & Showing Marquee will host the Floral Art Competition at the beginning of the week (4-8 July) and is then transformed into a mouth-watering feast of fruit and vegetables for the show’s final weekend (8-9 July). This year, the weekend marquee will be sponsored by New Covent Garden Food Co who have teamed up with the RHS as part of the ‘Grow, Cook, Enjoy’ campaign which also included the sale of the RHS Soup of the Month, Savoy Cabbage, in March 2006.
Alongside displays from professional fruit, vegetable and herb growers in the marquee, the RHS Trials Department at RHS Garden Wisley is creating a special display of growing crops in containers with plenty of inspiration for those with little space. Anyone who grows fruit or vegetables in gardens or allotments could also enter the Summer Fruit & Vegetable Competition, but applications for this have now closed - but visit the show to view all the entries and winners.
Daily Mail Pavilion plans
The Daily Mail Pavilion, which provides a focal point for the show, will be themed around the English countryside with a fisherman’s retreat as the inspiration point. Tim Sharples of Cedar Nurseries will return to create one of the gardens, and previous Tudor Rose winners Rosie Hardy, of Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants, and Sarah Eberle, for Hilliers, will create two more show gardens within the pavilion.
Lunch (window) box
Entrants to this year’s RHS Window Box and Hanging Basket Competition have been encouraged to create hanging baskets and window boxes following set themes. The themes are: Wildlife-friendly, Scented, Low Maintenance, Bountiful Blooms, and Edible, demonstrating that your boxes and baskets can provide you with colour and interest as well as a bite to eat!
Top nurseries make their debut
The Floral Marquee exhibitors are now confirmed and are the first exhibitor category to be selected. Those making their debut at the 2006 show will be Cookoo Box Nursery from Kent, who will be creating a visually stunning display of edible and ornamental capsicums. From Yorkshire, Primrose Bank will be creating a woodland-style display featuring astrantias. Cold Harbour Nursery from Dorset, will be bringing a wide variety of hemerocallis (day lilies) and ornamental grasses.
Growing heritage at Hampton
The theme for the NCCPG’s Plant Heritage Marquee in 2006 will be taken from The Growing Heritage Conference, held in the RHS Conference Halls on 5-6 April 2006. The conference aims to examine the need for and role of gardens in cultivated plant conservation within today’s regulatory environment, which has changed a great deal over the decades. Inside the marquee, alongside National Plant Collection holders, will be two fascinating gardens - one pre-1800 and one present day, showing how our cultivated plants, and our plant hunters, have made such a difference to our gardens.
New garden designers set to broaden minds
The show will give visitors a chance to spot the next Diarmuid Gavin or Cleve West with the launch of a new garden category, ‘Conceptual Gardens’, showcasing the garden designers of tomorrow.
‘Conceptual Gardens’ will challenge design students to push the boundaries of garden design and express a high level of innovation and creativity to ‘wow’ visitors at the show. Four new designers will be selected to build their garden at the show and will be judged for an RHS medal in their first major public challenge.
In its early days, the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show was viewed as the place to see original and quirky garden design from new designers. Many who were regarded then as alternative, have gone on to become part of the gardening establishment. ‘Conceptual Gardens’ will provide a new seedbed for young talent who will be some of tomorrow’s big names in this field.
Each candidate will be given a grant of £6,000. Considering the design brief, this sets a tricky task for the students and prepares them for the kind of challenges they may face in their future careers. It also means that show visitors will find some ‘out of this world’ design ideas to copy at home without the astronomical budget!