As seen at Hampton Court

 Umbrellas: The traditional symbol of the Hampton Court Flower Show, this year only needed for shade

The RHS Hampton Court Flower Show takes place every July, which usually means it is a sea of mud (coming, as it does, just after the rain magnets of the tennis at Wimbledon and the Glastonbury festival). This year, all three events stayed dry... isn't that one of the signs of the Apocalypse?

SENSATIONAL PURPLE

I may have gone a bit mad last year when shopping for bulbs. There was a great deal on Alliums at Hampton Court Flower show on the Warmhoven stand. You paid the money in advance and they sent the bulbs at the correct time for planting. But, I forgot what I had ordered so, I also bought some more at the RHS Wisley plant centre.

So, this year the garden has been full of alliums. The first to come up were Purple Sensation and Aflatuense.  They are pretty similar although Aflatuense is the taller of the two.

The cold winter slowed things down a little and the buds only started to appear in late April.

26 April 2010

Within a few days the buds start to open.

They hardly had time to unfurl when the bees decided to visit.

23 May 2010

6 June

All too soon flowers turn into seed heads.

Some flower heads formed these bulbils. Garlic does this too but, I've never seen them on alliums before. I eased them off the stalk and will plant them. Hopefully they'll produce new allium plants for next year, although I doubt they will be full sized blooms, that should take a few years. 

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