The Times - UK (2022-05-17)

the times | Tuesday May 17 2022 3

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absolute perfection that you won’t see

anywhere else.”

Asked when he thought the best time

for a flower show would be, Wilson

replied: “The standard answer is, ‘You

should have been here last week.’

Whatever time I would say, I would live

to regret it because it would have been

better a week before or a week later.”

Guy Barter, chief horticulturist at the

RHS, said he thought the timing of

Chelsea was as good as any. “You can

bring summer flowers forward and you

can hold back spring flowers.”

He added that flower shows simply

gained reputations for their individual

strengths: RHS Hampton Court at the

start of July, for example, is big on roses,

while RHS Tatton Park, at the end of

July, is known for its fruit and veg.

A former rugby pitch on the outskirts of
Oxford has been sold for £120 million in
a graphic illustration of the red-hot
market for space to accommodate the
UK’s fast-growing life sciences sector.
Once fully developed, Oxford Tech-
nology Park will host 450,000 sq ft of
offices and laboratories to house the
next generation of tech start-ups.
The sale is a coup for Angus Bates, a
developer who first spotted the potent-
ial of the site almost 20 years ago when
it was home to the Gosford All Blacks.
Bates, who is chief executive of Hill
Street Holdings but holds the site sepa-
rately with his wife Alicia, said: “It was
an oddity, a rectangular square of land
next to an RAF base which the rugby

Science REIT since its £350 million

float on London’s junior AIM exchange

in November last year.

Simon Farnsworth, the managing di-

rector of Ironstone, an asset manager

that advised Life Science REIT, said:

Peonies, geraniums, even vegetables.
For those of a green-fingered disposi-
tion, the Chelsea Flower Show has it all.
There’s just one problem. The high-
light of the horticultural calendar is
held at the wrong time of the year,
according to one leading expert.
Matthew Wilson, the garden design-
er and broadcaster, has said May is “a
terrible time to have a flower show”.
Wilson, a regular panellist on BBC
Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time
who is creating a garden at Chelsea to
mark the 75th anniversary of the pro-
gramme, told The Times: “The problem
is that if you look in your own garden, or
local park, everything is at the in-
between stage. The daffodils have gone,
and the tulips have finished. The
alliums are doing their thing.
“The plants of summer haven’t yet
arrived. Roses, flowering perennials,
geraniums, rudbeckias, echinaceas —
these are all later in the year.”
Chelsea Flower Show in its present
guise emerged in 1913, when it moved
from Temple Gardens on the bank of
the Thames to the Royal Hospital Chel-
sea, in west London. Previously known
as the RHS Great Spring Show, it has
traditionally been held during “show
week”, in the last third of May.
The event — which opens next week
— attracts 170,000 spectators, is
watched by about three million viewers
on the BBC and has become a fixture
for City grandees and Wall Street
bankers who jet in especially. Last year
it was moved to September due to the
pandemic, and it was cancelled the
previous year. However, it is now back
in its traditional May slot.
Wilson suggested that the
time of year, coupled with
the five-day window for the
show made it particularly
difficult for plants.
“The challenge for
growers and designers
designing and planting
is that if it’s a slightly
colder, or windier, or
drier spring, then
your plot or plants go
from being a bit
limited to very
limited,” he said. “If
you wanted to have the
widest number of plants
available, you’d have it a bit
later in the year. Look at

other big shows, such as Hampton

Court or Tatton Park. They’re a bit later

in the year in late June or early July, and

your choice of plants is wider and it’s

more reliable. It’s really squeaky bum

time as to whether your plants are

going to survive [at Chelsea].”

He conceded, however, that he

“didn’t particularly want Chelsea to

change, because Chelsea is

Chelsea and that’s what makes it

so special”.

The event is, he added, “like

haute couture for horticulture.

People say, ‘You can’t do that at

home,’ or, ‘That doesn’t look like my

garden,’ but that’s not the point. The

point is about trying to really push

boundaries of design and gardens, and

then in the pavillion showing plants at

Wrong blooming time for Chelsea

A gardening expert says

the much-fêted flower

show misses out on the

most dazzling displays,

Fariha Karim writes

U

ltimately designers

adapt their planting

plans to the time of

year of a show.

What is displayed at

the Chelsea Flower Show

partially depends on what the

weather has done for several

months before — for example, a

cold or a warm spring can

influence what’s going to be

workable and what’s out of the

picture.

But, generally speaking, there

are always similarities in the

pallet because we can only use

the plants that are looking good

at that time of year.

You can expect to see popular

May to June flowering plants,

such as geums, cirsium and

verbascum at this year’s show. It’s

a real mix of deep dark purples,

pale blues and pinks, and

splashes of orange too.

For me, May is prime time but

the later Hampton Court show

provides a totally different

palette of plants to use, from

ornamental grasses, to hotter

colour plants such as echinacea

and achillea and helenium, as

well as stalwarts such as hardy

geraniums, roses and nepeta.

So the actual challenge for

designers who are exhibiting is to

know what’s going to look good

and when, and to always have a

plan B.

It’s brilliant to have that spread

between shows, because it means

you’re going to see variation in

the planting displays — there is

something new at different times

of year.

Polly Wilkinson is a multi-award-

winning garden designer who is

now preparing her presentation

for the Chelsea Flower Show

Polly Wilkinson

Comment

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The garden designer Matthew Wilson, and last year’s Chelsea, held in September due to Covid

TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER RICHARD POHLE

The secret

is always

to have

a plan B

Rugby pitch turned science park is in £120m league of its own

club had been leasing at a nominal rent

for years. But it was surrounded by

other commercial developments and

close to the university’s materials cam-

pus. It was an obvious opportunity.”

It has taken almost two decades to

bring that vision to fruition. The park

has now welcomed its first tenant, The

Native Antigen Company, which sup-

plies reagents used in pharmaceutical

research. Six more companies are said

to be close to signing new leases.

The UK life science sector has been

thrust into the global spotlight by the

pandemic with Oxford, Cambridge and

London forming a “golden triangle” of

innovation hubs where research and

development space is at a premium.

The acquisition is the seventh and

largest by the property investor Life

“There is virtually no new supply of this

type, size and quality of space in the Ox-

ford catchment.” Oxford Biomedica,

the gene therapy biotech company that

has produced more than 100 million

doses of the Oxford vaccine for Astra-

Zeneca, is housed in a former Royal

Mail sorting office in the city. Oxford

Nanopore Technologies, whose hand-

held devices have been used to se-

quence emerging variants of Covid-19,

is based in a science park to the south.

Critics have warned that the UK’s

planning system is failing to keep pace

with demand from the fast-growing in-

novation sector.

Bates described the epic develop-

ment process as “challenging but huge-

ly fulfilling”. He said: “It took almost 15

years to get the original planning per-

mission. The politics of planning and

bureaucracy are the big hurdles.

“It took evidence and determination

to prove that there’s an overwhelming

need for planning for this type of use

creating space for absolutely cutting-

edge, high-value tech employment. It

doesn’t get any better than that.

“It’s not a mystery that to deliver this

cutting-edge technology industry you

need this space but that doesn’t seem to

filter through.”

The Gosford All Blacks have moved

to a new ground but club alumni have

been known to stop by and gaze at the

high-tech hub of steel and glass.

Bates added: “The club leased the

ground for many years and is still going

in Kidlington. People still come along

and say ‘I used to play rugby here’.”

Simon Freeman Business News Editor

A developer spotted the potential of

the field in Oxford 20 years ago