Another Chelsea has come and gone and its time to reflect and plan ahead for the next one. This year saw the toughest build up in every sense, both personally, physically and mentally.
The run up to Chelsea this year was a real challenge firstly with the plant material that I had chosen to use. I had decided to use a lot of ferns in my planting design to enhance my sculpture and had sourced a local supplier who specialism is British native ferns. Unfortunately none of the ferns had even shown any leaf growth three weeks before Chelsea, so when we did eventually get some good weather there was very little foliage. The second plant supplier, who specialises in British wildflowers and cottage garden plants called me the day before the van was due to be packed to let me know that all the foxgloves had failed and some of the plants had also, like the ferns, not shown much growth.
The weather this year has caused some real head aches thats for sure, when I start planning out my stand design in the summer, I try and select plants that naturally will look their best in the late spring as I’m not a fan of forcing plants, but after this years problems it makes me want to rethink!
I think that every exhibitor at Chelsea this year had suffered this year with their plant material not enjoying the cloudy wet spring we’ve had.
But this story is one of the many positives about the Chelsea experience, when I got to the planting up stage on site the plants had to be planted more tightly to create a lush feel and I quickly ran out as the few plants that did grow were not very full.Anyway, there I was having a melt down because my planting looked so sparse when one of my neighbouring stands suggested I borrow some of their plants, I felt so relieved and so grateful, it turned out that the plants belonged to Chris Beardshaw who was more than happy to help out.
I completed my planting which looked amazing, the ferns and wildflowers looked great supported by Chris Beardshaws Ladies Mantle, London Pride and Grasses.