Chelsea Flower show pictures

Here's a pictorial preview of the Chelsea Flower show from the Guardian. It doesn't do the show justice, but it does give you a taste of the floral extravagance that will be on display. Logistically it seems quite impossible to have so many perfectly flowering specimens of so many different plants all at once and for the entire week of the show. The displays are always quite beautiful, and even the potatoes are beautiful. Was it worth attending?  Yes, although they limit the number for each day of the show, the crowd was a bit dismaying. Rather hard to stand and just admire a garden at times even if they do forbid that bane of street fairs, farmers' markets, and garden shows, the stroller (or is it a pram?). And also no dogs. What ever makes you think your dog enjoys going to such events with you? Sorry.  You also get an idea here just how creative some of the garden designs are.  Enjoy.

Small garden creativity at the Chelsea Flower Show

Visiting the annual Chelsea Flower Show at least once should be a must for every garden enthusiast. The big landscape gardens are terribly impressive, but the smaller gardens can be quite lovely, very creative, and totally appealing. Here's another small photo essay complements of Treehugger showing some of the small gardens featured this year. TPP has always admired moss in gardens, but here in the upper Midwest moss pretty quickly turns into toast. Enjoy.  

Tuberiffic! Tuber display wins gold medalat Chelsea flower show!

For those of you unfortunate enough to have not attended a Chelsea flower show, well, how unfortunate indeed!  Nothing really compares. It actually isn't all about flowers, but flowers are a very big part of the show.  The display gardens are indeed very impressive, but the flower displays by plant producers are something to behold. How so many flowers of so many varieties could be gotten to flower all at once in such numbers that displays could be maintained for a week was quite amazing. TPP remembers strawberry and pepper displays, as well as an all moss, all the time (walls, roof, furniture) exhibit, but mostly it was flowers.  Well, congratulations to the tubers because for the first time they won the gold medal award!  Indeed, the only place you might see a more colorful display of potatoes would be just about any farmers' market in Bolivia or Peru. Actually what impressed TPP the most is the remarkable uniformity of the size and shape of the tubers, which is not what you would see in S. America where size, shape, and color of potatoes is quite diverse. 

Vertical Gardening at Chelsea & Your Food Supply

Ever been to the Chelsea flower show? The Phactors attended a few years ago as part of our 2nd botanical geek tour. If you do go, save enough time the next day to see the Chelsea Physic Garden only a short distance away; it's worth it. The amazing thing about Chelsea, and what sets it apart from all other flower shows, a lot, is the size and complexity of the garden installations. We found ourselves constantly asking "How did they do that?" The logistics are quite mind boggling like having picture perfect floral displays all week long of 50 different varieties of you name it, and getting them all to flower at once in large enough numbers to produce the display. This year a vertical garden installation will be featured to illustrate how to grow a big garden in a small space. One side of the building is all plants, one side solar cells, and the areas within for composting and propagating. Practical? Probably not, but imaginative, clever. Just think a rectangular building with two sides facing south. Think about it.
Of course the point of this is that cities have a problem. While they put lots of things and people conveniently close together, as they get larger the convenience decreases, and important things like water, sewage, and food must be dealt with at increasingly further distances away. Now some cities have solved the space for food production problem. Detroit now has enough vacant space to probably feed itself, but this wasn't planned. London is supposed to only have four days of food on hand at any one time, and this is probably true for most large cities. It's why the shops empty so fast during disasters. So what kind of person are you? Mostly to suit our busy lifestyle and our make it from scratch approach to food, the Phactors keep a considerable supply of basics on hand: canned goods, pastas, flours, beans, frozen stuff (but only good for a few days if the power goes out), and do not dare overlook the wine cellar. This is sort of a throw back to a rural childhood where winter storms frequently left you marooned for a few days, and a big garden tended to overwhelm if produce wasn't canned or frozen. But you must remain vigilant; just yesterday when fetching a decent bottle of red yours truly pointed out that the entire stock of red wine was down to just 9 bottles. Mrs. Phactor almost fainted. What if a disaster struck? For some reason our on hand wine stock is at its lowest in over 25 years. But that's another story. Although it might get a bit dull & some things would disappear quickly, we wouldn't starve for at least a month (but the squirrels better watch out!).
So what kind of person are you? How long could you hold out? Are you one of those real hard core survivalist with a year's supply? Wow! That's be a lot of wine! Or do you go day by day?