the times | Monday May 23 2022 29
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Buy prints or signed copies of Times cartoons from our Print Gallery at timescartoons.co.uk or call 020 7711 7826Never underestimate the power of the flower
Chelsea’s annual show is an inspiration for amateur gardeners who know how to find beauty and joy in their own back yard
politicians. The traditional English
border is imperilled by climate
change, because it is so rain-
dependent. Irrigation will soon no
longer seem ethical, I fear, says he
who owns an automated system for
which we give constant thanks.
Mulching becomes instead the best
hope, and for the next generation
Mediterranean species.
We must face the fact that a lot of
Chelseagoers arrive on bus passes.
We are old. Many under-50s,
including my own children, say they
lack time to garden. In truth,
everybody finds hours for what we
really want to do. When newly
married at 26 I cherished an
allotment in Barnes, as did a lot of
our neighbours: tilling was reckoned
cool. Today people buy almost as
many gardening books as cookery
ones, but the young hoe even less
than they bake, as distinct from
watching it happen on TV.
Arabella Lennox-Boyd, the great
designer, used to say she created
works of art for one generation. She
meant that there is not much chance
that the next owners of a garden,
family or not, will want the same
look their parents cherished.
When we pop our clogs, whoever
buys our house will probably
bulldoze the garden, as we did when
we started. So be it. We shall not
have to watch, from the great
Chelsea in the sky.we did on moving into our house 26
years ago was to rabbit-proof every
yard of the boundary. My mother
warned me not to keep expanding
borders, because what represented
excitement for energetic youth
becomes labour-intensive rods for
older backs. Most things grow
amazingly quickly. We have become
so obsessed with feeding that we
shall soon dine off fish blood and
bonemeal.
Few shrubs live for ever: if theysicken, get them out. Almost
anything can be moved. When plants
don’t like a garden — in our case
including such favourites as corydalis
and lupins — after a few years we
give up bucking the market and stick
with the zillions of things that
flourish.
This spring we are sobbing with
gratitude, because our ash trees have
burst into green one more time
without succumbing to dieback, ditto
our box, spared from blight and
caterpillars by copious spraying.
Yet every gardener is learning to
use fewer chemicals. The stuff that
for years we have sprayed on ground
elder should now be saved forfeet high, and some elderly roses still
flourish mightily by our back gate.
I am a sucker for gadgets, and pass
the hours once spent marching
behind an Atco watching the
Robomow doing its stuff. Other
horticultural problems are less
susceptible to technology. Every year
I waste money on patent products to
suppress blanket weed, none of
which work — and no, nor does the
old wives’ cure of barley straw.
Instead, I grumpily don waders,
plunge into the pond and manhandle
a net through the horrid stuff in
pathetic attempts to make our lilies
look as pristine as Chelsea
specimens.
Here is why so many of us love the
show: it is inspirational. We know
that, on our own patches, we cannot
match the professionals, but they
empower us to dream. This does not
mean the gardens that win gold
medals necessarily deserve most
applause — au contraire, some seem
absurdly sensationalist. But Chelsea
propagates a wondrous enthusiasm.
I never see anybody there in a bad
temper. Blooms and damp
greenstuffs, foxgloves and alliums,
stone walls and statuary, clematises
and specimen trees seldom fail to
work their magic, set against the
peerless backdrop of Wren’s Royal
Hospital hall and chapel.
What have I learnt from listening
to proper gardeners? The best thingB
anish dark thoughts of
politics, war, strikes and
galloping inflation. This is
the week for anybody with
the slightest green tinge to
their fingers to celebrate the hottest
flower show on Earth. Just rejoice, as
Margaret Thatcher used to say.
I have never wasted an hour
watching Chelsea Football Club, but
I love the real Chelsea, the one
without WAGs. This year there has
been moaning from some new-age
designers about its timing in May,
before authentic gardens are near
their best. But that is the whole idea.
Spring in herbaceous borders is the
season of hope and promise.
For 40 years I have been a
worshipper at the Chelsea shrine,
except the charity gala, which
happens this evening. Some of us
refer to that occasion as Beauty and
the Beasts night, because it is all
hedge fund managers and private
equity stars, who think stocks are
things you short, and who buy
mowers for their plastic grass.
The rightful joys of Chelsea are
created by plants and the
professional gardeners at whose feet
we go to sit, figuratively speaking.
They are best of British.
There is something about people
who work with borders and
parterres, rose gardens (before these
became oh-so-yesterday’s thing) and
decorative vegetables. The men and
women who design, nurture or
televise the finest plantscapes in the
land are not only artists, many are
also delightful company. Titchmarsh,
Don and other tribal elders are as
jolly in the flesh as they are on
screen.
Chelsea show gardens have little
to do with gardening as we
deadheaders know it, because
everything flowers simultaneously
and nothing has blight. Their
designers do fantasy, not reality. Mymother, who did some judging, once
heaped scorn on an exhibit that my
own newspaper had sponsored
because it included a water feature
alongside olive trees, such as is never
found in life.
A perk of commissioning show
gardens was that some planting
mysteriously found its way into our
beds afterwards. A modest hornbeam
hedge from one exhibit is now tenWe cannot match the
professionals but they
empower us to dream
Foxgloves, alliums and
specimen trees never
fail to work their magic
Max Hastingsngs