Visitors leaving the Chelsea Flower Show with their purchase
Each May, for five days, a 12 hectare site in the grounds of the Royal Chelsea Hospital is transformed into a modern-day Eden, brimming with horticultural delights from garden and floral exhibits to tree and vegetable displays...
Each May, for five days, a 12 hectare site in the grounds of the Royal Chelsea Hospital is transformed into a modern-day Eden, brimming with horticultural delights from garden and floral exhibits to tree and vegetable displays. We are speaking, of course, of the feted Chelsea Flower Show– run by Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), and widely recognised as Britain's most influential flower show – which this year celebrates its centenary.
To mark the occasion, RHS historian and flower enthusiast Brent Elliot has released a new and enlightening publication, filled with glorious images from the show's prestigious past and with an accompanying text that focuses on its history and development, as well as the trends it has both reflected and stimulated in the gardening world over the years. Here, in celebration of the flower show, which starts tomorrow, and its 100th year, we bring you a selection of photographs and a number of facts featured in the book...
(Above) Firms who bring plants not sundries aren't allowed to sell anything until after closing bell has rung on the last day of the show.
The show consists of three primary exhibit categories: show gardens (these are the biggest displays and are often subsidised), sundriesmen – retailers, artists, booksellers, specialist societies – and nursery stands.
One of the most distinctive stands in the Chelsea marquee in the postwar decades was that of Waterperry Horticultural School, based at Wheatley near Oxford – a gardening school for women, founded by Beatrix Havergal in 1932. The subject of the stand was always the same – the 'Royal Sovereign' strawberry, a variety bred in the late 19th century by Thomas Laxton and regarded at the time as the best strawberry on the market. The stand closed in 1970.
Between the 1920s and 1950s, a craze for rock gardens arose in Britain. At Chelsea, there were such a large number of rock gardens on display that a portion of the southern perimeter of the showground was named Rock Garden Bank and remained so long after the trend was over. Cranes were brought on site to lift the heavy boulders into place and earth was then piled on top so that they appeared as outcrops to be planted with alpines and turf.
Roses, a timeless favourite among flower afficionados, have always graced stands and formed the basis of gardens at Chelsea. Indeed, many new varieties are debuted there. This cultivar, Pink Sensation, photographed here at the 1965 show, has now vanished and is not to be confused wuth the Pink Sensation currently available, which was introduced in 1992.
The art of Bonsai, the dwarfing of trees for aesthetic effect, was slow to become popular in Britain as most 19th century gardeners regarded it as cruelty to trees. The first exhibit of Bonsai at Chelsea was staged by the Japan Society of London in 1961 and by 1979 eight bonsai nurseries were exhibiting – among them Peter Chan, whose bonsai featured in the latest issue of AnOther Magazine, and who exhibited at Chelsea for nearly 30 years.
Patrick Blanc made his first experimental green wall – a wall consisting of a series of containers for vegetation, with an integrated irrigation system – in 1988. But it was not until 2004, when it garnered mainstream publicity at the Musée Branly in Paris, that Blanc's living wall began to be imitated internationally. The vertical garden trend first emerged at Chelsea in 2008 and has since become a regular feature in one form or another.
