It is the most famous flower show in the UK and perhaps in the world, attracting visitors from all continents
The first Royal Horticultural Society Great Spring Show was held in 1862, at the RHS garden in Kensington.
Before this date the RHS had held flower shows from 1833 in their garden in Chiswick, which themselves had been preceded by fetes
The Great Spring Show was held at Kensington for twenty-six years but in 1888 the RHS decided to move the show to the heart of London
The Chelsea Flower Show receives a lot of publicity. It is attended by 157,000 visitors each year (a number limited by the capacity of the 11-acre (45,000 m2) ground), and all tickets must be purchased in advance.
From 2005 the show was increased from four days to five, with the first two days only open to RHS members.
Amy Willerton in 2014 Chelsea Flower Show
Amy Willerton sat in front of a shallow water feature and a deep red building
There are four grades of award presented, gold, silver-gilt, silver and bronze, in each of the categories listed below
Awards categories
- Flora Gardens and floral exhibits
- Hogg Exhibits of trees
- Knightian Exhibits of vegetables, including herbs
- Lindley Exhibits of special educational or scientific interest
- Grenfell Exhibits of pictures, photographs, floral arrangements and floristry
Special awards
- Best Show Garden Award
- Best Courtyard Garden Award
- Best Chic Garden Award
- Best City Garden Award
- RHS Sundries Bowl
- RHS Junior Display Trophy
- RHS Floral Arrangement Trophies
- RHS Floristry Trophies
- Show Certificates of merit
- Certificates for Junior displays
- RHS President's Award
Significant Gardens and Exhibits
- 1929 Mrs Sherman Hoyt's exhibit of American cacti, complete with painted backdrops depicting the Mojave desert, which was acquired for Kew and had its own glasshouse there for over half a century, before being absorbed into the Princess of Wales Conservatory
- 1930s J. Macdonald's grass gardens – the lone voice declaring the merits of ornamental grasses for his generation
- 1936 Hilliers' 'Dingley Dell' exhibit
- 1937 Coronation Year: the Empire Exhibition, with displays of ornamental and economic plants from around the Empire
- 1953 Another Coronation Year: William Wood of Taplow staged a 'Cutty Sark' garden
- 1959 The Times 'Garden of Tomorrow', complete with radio-controlled lawn mower
- 1960 The great orchid display to accompany the Third World Orchid Conference
- 1964 Popular Gardening's 'Garden of Today'
- 1967 The first garden for the disabled at Chelsea
- 1968 Wisley's exhibit of hostas, which gave a great boost to their popularity
- 1980 Display of penjing from China
- 1982 Brenda Hyatt's display of auriculas, which launched these plants back into popularity
- 1988 John Chambers's honeybee garden
- 1993 Julie Toll's seaside garden controversially won the last Wilkinson Sword award for best garden, described by David Stevens as "a sand dune garden that was well planted and beautiful, but visitors said it wasn't a garden."
- 1994 Isabel and Julian Bannerman's Daily Telegraph Old Abbey garden, with a virtuoso display of mature tree transplanting
- 1996 Dan Pearson's London roof garden for the 1990s
- 1997 Christopher Bradley-Hole's Latin Garden, the first garden at Chelsea to exhibit the new fashion for sparse planting
- 2000 The Garden History Society's Le Nôtre Garden, and Piet Oudolf's winning 'Evolution' garden
- 2009 James May's Paradise in Plasticine, a garden made entirely of Plasticine. Its concept and creation was documented for James May's Toy Stories
- 2010 Row after row of exotic orchids from Taiwan, presented by the Taiwan Orchid Growers Association (TOGA).This was the first time that Taiwan was invited to the Chelsea Flower Show.
- 2011 Diarmuid Gavin's Irish Sky Garden. This was the first garden to be suspended in the air.
No comments:
Post a Comment