The Royal Horticultural Society’s London Plant Fair is a haven for plant lovers looking for unusual blooms. Here are some of the highlights of this year’s show.
Walking into one of the RHS London Shows is like tip-toeing into an enormous horticultural sweetshop. The huge Horticultural Halls in central London are quietly bustling with people who adore plants, especially unusual cultivars of certain plants.
These people love breeding these plants and buying the plants, photographing the plants and exclaiming with a good gardening friend as they wander around the halls at how wonderful these plants are.
Tecophilaea cyanocrocus
You find yourself making best friends with the stallholders, who are thrilled to share the latest unusual brassica or sempervivum that they’ve bred with someone who has caught just one iota of their excitement. The stalls are, in their own individual ways, incredible works of art. Some are brimming with plants, crammed in every container possible. Some are lined up so neatly you scarcely dare approach in case you make the whole display seem less regimented. Each and every single one of them is manned by a man or a woman who sits quite quietly adoring their plants as visitors gasp and point.
Though this week’s Plant Fair was busy, it felt like a secret world beating quietly away in the dirty, heaving chest of Westminster. If you hate the thronging crowds of Chelsea, and really just want to swap tales with a plantsman about the new rare camellia he’s growing, this is the show that you should clear your entire diary to attend.
Here are some more photo highlights:
Narcissus ‘Prussia Cove’
Narcissus ‘Mayor’s Choice’
Lewisia cotyledon hybrids
Hosta ‘White Feather’
Tulip ‘Cummins’
Fritillaria persica
Lily ‘Purple Heart’
Asiatic lily ‘Red Velvet’
Lily ‘Pensacola’
Echeveria gilva red
Why yes, that is a whole table of gorgeous camellias. If you want to meet them personally, come back tomorrow for a whole post on the camellia competition at the RHS Plant Fair.
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Nancy
oh what a dangerous delicious and delightful way to spend the day! I don’t know that I could find such a show here in the middle of the USA, but I enjoyed seeing your discoveries.
Gaz@AlternativeEden
Fab photos, the Fritillaria persica is a stunner, will look out for that for next spring.
F&F
Glad you enjoyed Gaz: Fritillarias are such great plants: so different!
Wife, Mother, Gardener
Beautiful stuff! It sounds like gardeners heaven. It is fun to get inside scoop even across the ocean. Thanks for the sharing your beautiful photos!
Gaz@AlternativeEden
My partner was able to call in after work the other day, and has posted even more photos on out blog (as if the above pics were not enough!
F&F
Thanks wife, mother, gardener. I love reading your blog whenever you submit a new post to gardengrab by the way: it’s a real treat. The show is great: it’s a bit of a best-kept secret over here in London as the press don’t really cover it at all, not in the same way as they do with the Chelsea or Hampton Court Flower Shows. While I think many more people would enjoy it, I love the quiet bustle of the shows at the moment. They happen about four times a year in different guises, and I am very lucky that the halls are just behind my office.
F&F
Thanks Gaz: i’ll hop over to your blog and have a look!