More Beauty than you can Imagine!
The Chelsea Flower Show has been a major, world-wide attraction for many years. It is held on the grounds of the Royal Hospital at Chelsea -- a hospital and home for British military veterans and a subject, in its own right, of a future story here. The show is an incredible undertaking, with many hundreds of exhibits, some of which are entire gardens erected just for the show and totally gone a few days after it closes. The Great Pavilion (housed in a huge temporary building, also in place only for the 6-day length of the show) contains an overwhelming display of beauty in an area covering a number of acres. It is truly difficult to portray, in words, the magnificence of color and form that are on display.
The first picture, below, is typical of the displays in the pavilion -- but it doesn't convey the incredible variety of those displays. Many of the exhibitors specialize in just one kind of flower -- or a family of them -- as is the case in this first picture. So every new exhibit seems to open a whole new vista to the visitor. And the displays are not limited to flowers -- many include fruits and vegetables -- some arranged in amazingly artistic ways. (We've only included a few pictures here -- to see many more, click on: http://chuck.smugmug.com/gallery/558786)
(By the way, the ability to include a picture within a blog posting here is something new -- we've just downloaded the software that lets us do that. So this blog will become a bit more graphical in the future, though we'll continue to send you to another website for more pictures.)
The second picture is a close up of a variety of daffodils that Chuck liked particularly well.
At the show, gardens can be entered in several categories, including "city", "courtyard", "chic" and "show". The picture below is of one of the show gardens entered -- this one was the winner of the "best of show" prize. Understand that the entire garden must be created on a bare spot of ground -- so the cottage, fence, pond and other parts of this garden were prepared as part of the entry. This particular entry was sponsored by the pensioners (the retired veterans) who live at the Royal Hospital (whose grounds host the show) -- and it was created according to their ideas by a professional garden designer. The theme was "A Soldier's dream of 'Blighty'" -- essentially a British serviceman's idealized memories of home ("Blighty" being slang for England).
You may not have the good fortune to be in London when the Chelsea Flower Show is on -- after all, it's only 6 days out of the year. But if ever you are going to be here at the right time try to get the tickets and make it a centerpiece of your visit. (And you need to order tickets months in advance -- we ordered ours in February).
An interesting sidelight of the show that we had not thought of beforehand is the "allergy connection". At various times we found ourselves sneezing, then realized that if you listened to the crowd you could hear quite a bit of sneezing going on. I guess those thousands (millions?) of flowers and plants give off a lot of pollen -- lots of plants plus lots of people = lots of sneezing.
By the way, it's also a fertile ground for celebrity sighting, although the closest we game was a close brush with Diarmuid Gavin, the Irishman who is seen frequently on TV gardening shows on both sides of the Atlantic.
The first picture, below, is typical of the displays in the pavilion -- but it doesn't convey the incredible variety of those displays. Many of the exhibitors specialize in just one kind of flower -- or a family of them -- as is the case in this first picture. So every new exhibit seems to open a whole new vista to the visitor. And the displays are not limited to flowers -- many include fruits and vegetables -- some arranged in amazingly artistic ways. (We've only included a few pictures here -- to see many more, click on: http://chuck.smugmug.com/gallery/558786)
(By the way, the ability to include a picture within a blog posting here is something new -- we've just downloaded the software that lets us do that. So this blog will become a bit more graphical in the future, though we'll continue to send you to another website for more pictures.)
The second picture is a close up of a variety of daffodils that Chuck liked particularly well.
At the show, gardens can be entered in several categories, including "city", "courtyard", "chic" and "show". The picture below is of one of the show gardens entered -- this one was the winner of the "best of show" prize. Understand that the entire garden must be created on a bare spot of ground -- so the cottage, fence, pond and other parts of this garden were prepared as part of the entry. This particular entry was sponsored by the pensioners (the retired veterans) who live at the Royal Hospital (whose grounds host the show) -- and it was created according to their ideas by a professional garden designer. The theme was "A Soldier's dream of 'Blighty'" -- essentially a British serviceman's idealized memories of home ("Blighty" being slang for England).
You may not have the good fortune to be in London when the Chelsea Flower Show is on -- after all, it's only 6 days out of the year. But if ever you are going to be here at the right time try to get the tickets and make it a centerpiece of your visit. (And you need to order tickets months in advance -- we ordered ours in February).
An interesting sidelight of the show that we had not thought of beforehand is the "allergy connection". At various times we found ourselves sneezing, then realized that if you listened to the crowd you could hear quite a bit of sneezing going on. I guess those thousands (millions?) of flowers and plants give off a lot of pollen -- lots of plants plus lots of people = lots of sneezing.
By the way, it's also a fertile ground for celebrity sighting, although the closest we game was a close brush with Diarmuid Gavin, the Irishman who is seen frequently on TV gardening shows on both sides of the Atlantic.
posted by Chuck and Kathi Calvano @ 3:06 PM
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