CHELSEA - BLOOMING GOOD

Foxgloves in the Global Stone Bee Friendly Plants garden, designed by Janey Auchincloss and Paul Hammond (f6.3 @ 1/160s. 100 ISO, 150mm lens - 225mm 35mm equivalent)

Foxgloves (f6.3 @ 1/60s. 100 ISO, 210mm - 315mm equivalent)

Black Iris (f5.6 @ 1/180s. 100 ISO, 300mm - 450mm equivalent)

  Circium (f5.6 @ 1/180s. 100 ISO, 260mm - 390mm equivalent)

Sarracenia leucphylla (f5.6 @ 1/125s, 3200 ISO)

Bromeliads in the Trailfinders Australian Garden, designer: Scott Wynd
(f5.6 @ 1/50s. 100 ISO, 300mm - 450mm equivalent)

 Irises in Christina Williams' Music on the Moors courtyard garden.
(f6.3 @ 1/50s. 100 ISO, 75mm - 112mm equivalent)

White Iris (f6.3 @ 1/160s. 100 ISO, 170mm - 255mm equivalent)


Iris Sibirica Silver Edge (f2 @ 1/30s. 100 ISO, 50mm)

  Yellow Orchids (f6.3 @ 1/13s. 100 ISO, 190mm - 285mm equivalent)

 Multicoloured Pansies (f4.5 @ 1/10s, +1.7EV, 100 ISO, 190mm - 285mm equivalent)

Andy Sturgeon garden (f5.6 @1/1000s ISO 1250)

Iris in Japanese Garden - F5.6 @1/125s ISO 1000

CHELSEA - BITS AND BOBS

Chelsea isn't just about the flowers and serious competition for gold medals - there are quirky designs, odd plants, nice design touches, and interesting bits of garden sculpture too. Here are some we spotted.

A Yorkshire dish of rhubarb crumble and 'custard' from designers Simon Hall, Kate Dundas, John MacCleary and Tom Walker.

A tree made out of wood (woven willow wands) by Tom Hare.

Willow is a great material for sculptures - it is used for the bird above as well as the horse and rider below.

Rows of glass bell cloche.

A lichen covered rabbit.

A mirror set into the side of a pond doubles the value of a Water Lily.

Lamp Head: A Snakes Head Fritillary lit up in a dark corner of the Great Marquee.

A modern take on the cloister.

A home for bees : A place for solitary bees and other insects to live in Amber Goudy's Sustainable

Highland Garden (above and below).

A stumpery of Silver Birch logs, through which a stream flows, in the Naturally Fashionable Garden, designed by Nicholas Dexter.

 There weren't many green roofs on show, and most of those were small or impractical. Would this one on the massive Eden Project, Places of Change garden, designed by Paul Stone, last through heavy rain? There was no sign of pond liner, or even plastic sheeting.

There were also fewer green walls than there had been over the last couple of years. This one was in the Tourism Malaysia Garden designed by James Wong and David Cubero (above and below).

Several stands made use of glass baubles or globes, coloured and plain, to compliment their planting, as in this view of silver birch trees in the Great Marquee. You could also buy more corporate-looking globes such as this below...

This use of glass as the inside of a waterfall, produced lovely water colour images on our favourite garden, Kazuyuki Ishihara's Kazahana.

Arisaema sikokianum (Japanese Jack-in-the-Pulpit)

HERE COMES THE JUDGE

If there is one thing you can be sure of at the RHS Chelsea flower show - it's that you probably won't agree with the judge's decision. There are gardens that get gold medals - but look tired just a fews days into the show. There are gardens that you would want to recreate in part or in whole that only get a bronze. This year our favourite garden only got a silver medal.

Iris Sibirica 'Tropic Night'

The garden was called  Kazahana (A light snow flurry from a cloudless sky) designed by Kazuyuki Ishihara.  He has won three gold medals at Chelsea - so it must have been disappointing to only get silver this year.

Equisetum Japonicum

The planting was beautiful. We took a load of photos and chatted to one of the people on the stand who very kindly let us enter the garden. Usually at Chelsea only the Queen, Alan Titchmarsh or friends of the designer are allowed into a garden. This is a shame because gardens are meant to be enjoyed from the inside and this is definitely true of this garden.

The garden was designed to be a roof garden with a  hidden room that is meant to enclose you in a green world. Perhaps he was marked down as it is difficult to appreciate this room from outside the barrier - where the public stand.

All the walls are covered with these beautiful, tactile mounds of moss which must have taken ages to grow. Even the table in the room was covered in this living green.

Over the top of the room ran a glass rill flowing into a waterfall to fill the pond.

Water also flowed down the windows - letting in light but giving privacy from outside prying eyes.

Even amongst the noise of Chelsea it was cool and calming inside the garden. I actually found it quite moving.

keeping everything spick and span

Related post (on our technology blog): Lack of HD gives Chelsea the blues

BANK HOLIDAY BEES

The bank holiday weekend finally brought out the bees. Up until then the garden has been a bit quiet even though there are loads of alliums for the bees to enjoy. But, the sun is out and the chives are in full bloom and maybe it is just the right time of year - whatever the reason the garden is full of bees.

Honey bees and bumblebees on Allium Globemaster

If you are curious and keen to find out which bees are in your garden you should start with the Natural History Museum's (NHM) quick guide to the six most common bumblebees. It prints out to a handy wallet size guide. If you have the seventh most common bee then if is worth getting a copy of Field Guide to the Bumblebees of Great Britain and Ireland - by Mike Edwards and Martin Jenner. 

Bees bodies are made up of three parts: head, thorax and abdomen. You need to check each segment - where the stripes are, how many stripes and what colour. This guy has one yellow stripe where the thorax meets the head and a broken yellow stripes where the abdomen meets the thorax and finally an orange tail at the end of the thorax. According to the NHM guide this makes it a female Bombus Pratorum.

This little guy has very similar markings but the abdomen stripe is not broken and the tail is white. I'm pretty sure this is a female Bombus Lucorum although B. Terrestris is very similar....and that is the problem, some bumblebees look very similar. The only way to be absolutely certain is to check, with a hand lens or microscope, things like their sting sheath and spines on their legs. 

But some Bumblebees are very easy to identify.

This one is totally black except for that bright orange tail, which makes it a female B. Lapidarius.

head longer than it is wide

head as long as it is wide

Head size and shape, plus the colour of their facial hair is also used by the experts to help identify one bumble from another. In the picture above you can also clearly see the bee's three ocelli in a straight line (between the eyes) - which detect light intensity.

The length of a bees tongue is also important to which plants it can feed on. Long tongued bees can reach in to tubular flowers to suck up the nectar. However, some short tongued bees steal the nectar by punching a hole in the base of the flower. While that is good for the bee the flower gets short changed. It gives away its nectar without getting pollinated.