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Chelsea Flower Show 2016: The Royal Bank of Canada Garden
Before I wind up my coverage of the 2016 Chelsea Flower Show there are two posts I feel compelled to write. The first is a follow-up to my preview post describing the Royal Bank of Canada Garden...
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RHS London Rose Show 2016
It’s a good sign when the Royal Horticultural Society show schedule is growing rather than shrinking. Last year an early summer London Rose Show was added to the programme; this November the...
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In, Out, In, Out, Shake it all About
Hasn’t the whole EU Referendum campaign been ghastly? I’ve just wanted to run and hide in the garden until its all over. There’s no Boris in my bushes or Cameron among my calendulas. Farage hasn’t...
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Hampton Court Palace Flower Show 2016: Show Gardens – Part I
I am not a negative individual by nature, but I had misgivings about this year’s Hampton Court Palace Flower Show. Some of the design drawings on the RHS website looked positively ghastly and I am...
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Dazzling Disas
Being a man of the world, it takes quite a lot to impress me. Yet Dave Parkinson’s display of South African disa orchids at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show never fails to take my breath away....
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RHS London Harvest Festival 2016
Autumn has truly arrived when it’s time for the RHS London Harvest Festival show. This annual event comes at a busy time for me, falling just before I embark on my annual buying trip to India and...
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Reappraising Gerberas
It’s day three of my involuntary, lurgy-related incarceration. As you can imagine, I am not coping with it well. Yesterday, having taken until midday to generate sufficient energy to get myself...
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RHS London Early Spring Plant Fair 2017
The RHS London shows ought to be a pleasure for me to visit; they take place just five minutes from my office and are genteel, polite affairs, quite unlike the scrum of Chelsea or the hassle of...
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RHS Botanical Art Show 2017
Had I not been a landscape architect, gardener or fashion designer – all professions suggested by my school careers advisor, who was largely at a loss with anyone who didn’t want to be a teacher,...
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Great Dixter Spring Plant Fair 2017
Every visit to Great Dixter is a treat, but when the additional carrot of a plant fair is dangled in front of my face, that treat becomes an irresistible temptation. And so it was, having hauled...
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Chelsea Flower Show 2017 Preview
I am taking a different approach to my Chelsea Flower Show coverage this year. Recent events and the amount of time I am able to spend at the show have persuaded me to devote more time to enjoying...
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Chelsea Flower Show 2017: Beneath a Mexican Sky
Ah, the vagaries of the British weather. Last week: wind and torrential rain, this week: clear skies and temperatures in the twenties centigrade. I’ve veered from wearing boots and a winter coat to...
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Chelsea Flower Show 2017: Best in Show – The M&G Garden
Well slap my thigh and call me Mildred, James Basson won gold and landed this year’s Best in Show for his monumental Maltese quarry garden. Gold was, as I predicted, inevitable, and Best in Show a...
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Chelsea Flower Show 2017: Chengdu Silk Road Garden
When I go to the Chelsea Flower Show, I want to see flowers. Whilst in the Great Pavilion this expectation is met in spades, occasionally some of the garden designers forget and start getting a bit...
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The Merry Month of May
O THE month of May, the merry month of May, So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green! O, and then did I unto my true love say, Sweet Peg, thou shalt be my Summer’s Queen. Thomas Dekker...
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Chatsworth Flower Show 2017: Preview
Hot on the heels of Chelsea comes the Royal Horticultural Society’s newest, most exciting show at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. Home to the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, Chatsworth is one the...
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Chelsea Flower Show 2016-2017: The Morgan Stanley Gardens
Given the paucity of show gardens at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, I regret not having written more about last year’s crop, which had a different pedigree altogether. I hope to correct one such...
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Chatsworth Flower Show 2017: Press Day
Today the famous British weather excelled itself … in drenching everyone from Mary Berry to Alan Titchmarsh, in flattening countless delphiniums and in spoiling what might have been a glorious...
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Chatsworth Flower Show 2017: BlueBell Nursery
I’ve been to a lot of flower shows and admired a lot of outstanding show stands, so it takes a lot for an exhibitor to really knock my socks off. But nothing could divert my attention away from...
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Chatsworth Flower Show 2017: The IQ Quarry Garden
What is it about the appeal of quarry-inspired gardens this year? Is because as a nation we seem determined to dig ourselves into the deepest hole possible? Is it because we feel stuck between a rock...
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