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Flowers & Gardens

Willow's Chelsea Flower Show 2022 Highlights

Willow takes us on her tour of Chelsea Flower Show...

Chelsea Flower Show is one of my highlights of the year.  Quite often, in the past,  I've been installing huge displays for Chelsea in Bloom throughout the night before it opens and by the time I get myself to the show, I'm feeling pretty zombie-like and float around not taking anything in properly.

This year, I was feeling pretty spritely for once and after hanging out on the Brora stand chatting to their customers about our collaboration, I spent a wonderful hour in the Grand Pavillion absorbing the magic.

 

 

Pollyanna Wilkinson's 'This Too Shall Pass' for the mothers for mothers charity was Willow's highlight

Foxgloves are one of my reasons for living in May and I missed them desperately when the flower show moved to September last year. This time, they did not let me down and showed up in a major way. Their sensational spires, again in colours that were new to me appeared, searing into the sky in most of the gardens I saw. I do love the peachy Sutton’s Apricot and Dalmation Peach but I'm yet to be sold on the highlighter yellow ‘Digitalis Ambigua’ that popped up a lot. The Dalmation white with deep Ribena splatters are still my faves.

Pollyanna Wilkinson’s garden “This too shall pass’  for the Mother's for Mother's charity was my highlight.   The planting was airy and light; lots of pastels and vibrant green, a soft peachy Iris that I'd never met before -  peach was definitely a running theme this year - soft pink roses, sprinkly alliums, deep red poppies and delicate sugary geums, gave me such an overwhelming feeling of lightness and calm I found it hard to tear myself away.

 

 
Before I went to the flower show, I spent the morning with Charlotte Lawson Johnston from ‘Cloth Collective’ and natural fabric dyer Kate Turnbull at Anna Mason’s atelier learning how to dye fabric using plants and flowers.  It was utterly fascinating ( I'm going to tell you more about that in our next issue of The Seedling)  and so thrilling, mere hours later,  to discover Kate’s own ‘Textile Garden’  she had created with gardener Lottie Delamain, which happily,  was bursting with foxgloves as well as her exquisitely naturally dyed wisps of hanging fabrics.

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