Chelsea 2013: Highlights - Mainly Retrospective

Grey Granite and Dr Anne went on their annual expedition to Chelsea, this was the 100th Chelsea show and many of the exhibits which particularly appealed to Grey Granite were slightly retrospective.

Grey Granite was delighted by the luxuriant hawthorn bushes flowering along the Chelsea embankment,  seen here with the towers of Battersea power station in the distance. Grey Granite thinks of the hawthorn hedges surrounding the garden of the house in which she grew up.

E.W.King's stand included this intriguing collection of small seed measures and these old fashioned sweet peas which Grey Granite remembers her father growing.

The National Dahlia Collection Stand in the Great Pavilion, this reminded Grey Granite of gardens recalled from the 1950s, probably based on her Great Uncle Jack Aden''s small market garden, known as his 'plot' . This was where Grey Granite many happy, and she now realizes formative, hours with her Dad helping to prick out seedlings and carrying out other simple horticultural tasks. Alan Titchmarsh thought this display reminded him of a Marie Lloyd song, originally banned by the Lord Chamberlain, 'She sits among the cabbages and peas' (Modified to 'She sits among the cabbages and leeks' which satisfied the Lord Chamberlain's sense of propriety)  Grey Granite was reminded of  a passage from 'A Green and Pleasant Land, How England's Gardeners Fought the Second World War'   by Ursula Buchan

  'In peacetime, gardening is an activity that is pursued by millions of people, more or less willingly, sometimes to the exclusion of much else. It has practical, aesthetic and spiritual dimensions; it is both earthily satisfying and emotionally recuperative. As all keen gardeners know, gardening is a potent consolation in bad times or circumstances;so it is small wonder that in wartime people often strove very hard to tend a garden, sometimes in extremely unpromising circumstances. Small wonder, too, that the way they  tackled gardening in all its forms during the war years turned out to be emblematic of the way they dealt with many of the difficulties and constraints imposed on them; with thrifty ingenuity, a keen scepticism and invincible humour.'

Alpines displayed in  a traditional alpine house

The undoubted highlight of Chelsea for Grey Granite was seeing this spectacular Lady's Slipper orchid (Cypripedium calceolus), Britain's rarest orchid growing in the Le Jardin De Yorkshire garden. This demanding orchid, once widespread in the limestone areas of Northern England, has been pillaged so badly by plant hunters that it is now confined to  a single, closely guarded site in Yorkshire.

Sculpted wire sheep in the Yorkshire garden, which was inspired by Yorkshire's successful bid to host the grand Depart of the 2014 Tour de France. 

Reading University's grass free lawn is biodiverse and wildlife friendly.This species rich planting is designed to be walked on like  a traditional lawn  its diversity includes garden and native species, reminiscent of grassland before the mass use of agri-chemicals.

Miracle-Gro'wers 1970's garden

Blackmore and Langdon have exhibited their magnificent begonias and delphiniums with great  success at every Chelsea Flower Show.

Grey Granite's Dad grew huge begonias. These were grown in clay pots lined with cow pats which Dad somehow acquired in old Ostermilk tins, possibly from a boy at the school where he taught for over 40 years interrupted only by service in the RAF.  

Traditional herbaceous borders and a modern statue in the Arthritis Research garden.