Every year I wait in anticipation to discover the newest winner of The Rose of the Year Competition. I adore growing roses and I particularly enjoy trialling plants and finding new, naturally healthy roses I can recommend. In February 2023, Roses UK sent me a new bare root rose to trial – the winner of the Rose of the Year 2023 Competition – Rosa ‘Peach Melba®’ (KORmelpea).
One of the things I look forward to most at the Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show is the opportunity to meet the new rose introductions face to face and discover their fragrances. I was sorry to miss visiting the Chelsea this year. David Austin Roses launched two brand-new roses at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2022.
Runner beans are miraculous vegetables that will comfortably fulfil any gardener’s lofty ambitions to grow stunning plants that look attractive, flower freely, and produce an abundant harvest of delicious beans within a small space!
I am a self-confessed runner bean fan. For years, I’ve been running Runner Bean Trials searching for the best tasting and most productive runner bean varieties and the optimum growing methods to cultivate these vegetables.
Spring is such an uplifting time in the garden. As the days lengthen and spring flowers come into bloom, the anticipation of the wealth of flowers we’ll admire in our countryside and gardens over the coming seasons provides me with an abundance of reasons to be thankful. If your garden is looking a little lacklustre at the moment, don’t worry – there are some delightful spring-flowering perennial plants available at nurseries and garden centres, which will brighten up our gardens this spring and in the years that follow.
Garden Designer Jackie Currie and Plant Heritage won a Gold Medal for their ‘National Plant Collections Everywhere!’ exhibit at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2021! This stunning exhibit showcased plants from National Plant Collections grown inside living rooms, glasshouses, gardens, and allotments, across the UK.
One of the stars of the exhibit was the Salvia caymanensis, grown by John and Linsey Pink who hold a National Collection of Salvias.
Welcome to the third part of my overview of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2021 (see part one here and part two here)……
Welcome to part two of my overview of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2021 (if you missed part one, please click here). Let me take you on a tour of the gardens and exhibits I visited at this year’s very special autumn RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2021…..
I absolutely adore roses, their flowers can be everything I want in a bloom; roses can be sumptuous, glamorous, and luxurious, yet also relaxing and comforting. I find the scents of my favourite roses feel uplifting and reviving. Every year, I look forward with great anticipation to meeting the winner of the Rose of the Year Competition.
I hold two National Collections of orchids – a National Collection of Miniature Aerangis and Angraecum Species and a National Collection of Miniature Phalaenopsis Species. I set up these collections to raise awareness of the dangers that these miniature orchid species (and other plants) are facing in the wild and to help conserve these fascinating plants.
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is a much anticipated event in the horticultural calendar. It’s a week long celebration of plants that provides an opportunity to see plants face-to-face and discover nurseries’ new plant ranges.
I adore fragrant roses! Each year, I relish meeting the new rose introductions from David Austin Roses, at the Chelsea Flower Show.
Today the Royal Horticultural Society launched a competition inviting the public to vote to decide the winner of the prestigious accolade of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show Plant of the Decade. The nominated plants are all winners of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show Plant of the Year Competition. Here are the nominees……
Anemone ‘Wild Swan’Back in 2010, Anemone ‘Wild Swan’ ‘Macane001’ was the winner of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show Plant of the Year Competition.
Last month, I published a lovely competition from Burpee Europe and Mr Fothergill’s who gave readers an exciting opportunity to name their first ever blight-resistant orange tomato! Thank you to everyone of you who entered; it was tough to decide on a winner as we received heaps of super name suggestions for this interesting new tomato. Our favourites were:
Sweet Amber, suggested by Laura Blackburn
Tangerino, suggested by Roger Seaman
Golden Girl, suggested by Irene Wilson
Merrygold, suggested by Ann Page
Hope, suggested by Penny Grant and Helen Tottle-Nugent
Sunpop, suggested by Georgina G.
I am a passionate advocate for going peat free. I’ve always been a peat free gardener, but I’ve not always managed to find good quality peat free compost. To search for good quality peat free products, I run peat free Compost Trials every year. Dalefoot Composts have been the top performing compost brand, in all of my trials to date.
I always look forward to seeing Medwyn and Gwenda Wiliams, they’re such lovely people. So, it was wonderful to be with Medwyn and Gwenda, to celebrate their amazing 12th consecutive Gold Medal win, for their incredible display of vegetables, at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2019!
It’s quite an amazing feat to produce full size vegetables at the end of May, when many growers haven’t yet sown most of their seeds and don’t dare to plant their tomatoes or anything tender outside, for fear of frost!
One of the loveliest things about the RHS Chelsea Flower Show is getting the chance to see amazing plants and having the opportunity to speak to plant experts. If you’re interested in Rhododendrons and Azaleas, David Millais is the man to talk to. David’s the Chairman of the Rhododendron, Camellia, and Magnolia Group, and the owner of Millais Nurseries in Churt, near Farnham, in Surrey.
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show Plant Of The Year Award was first presented in 2010 to promote and celebrate the continuing work of breeders and nurseries in producing improved new plants. The RHS Chelsea Plant Of The Year Award celebrates and recognises the exciting and diverse range of new plants which are launched at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show, every year.
I am always hoping to meet a new favourite plant at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, but as well as plants, I enjoy finding some of my favourite people at Chelsea. Jonathan Hogarth is one of my favourites; he’s utterly bonkers about Hostas! Jonathan holds a National Collection of Miniature Hostas, he also runs Hogarth Hostas – a specialist Hosta nursery.
May is a wonderful month, enhanced by the uplifting serene, perfect green of all the wonderful new leaves, as they open on trees and shrubs, and the expectation and hope of the arrival of rose and peony flowers. I love to see the first rose buds of the year developing on my favourite roses.
Garden designer Dr Catherine MacDonald devised the Seedlip Garden as a celebration of the pea – Pisum sativum. The Seedlip Garden features peas and plants related to peas – plants from the pea plant family – Fabaceae. This Space to Grow Garden also honours the work of three men and their work in relation to peas. The first man that the Seedlip Garden commemorates is Gregor Mendel (1822-1824).
I love to visit the Grand Pavilion at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show! This vast arena, which extends to almost three acres in size, is filled with super exhibits created by around one hundred specialist nurseries during the week of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. It’s such a joy to visit! If you’re looking for some new plants, and you don’t have a particular variety or species in mind, visiting specialist nurseries, or enjoying a day out at a specialist plant fair, or a flower show, such as the RHS Chelsea Flower Show or the RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, can help to connect you with your new favourite plant or plants!
