London - Whenever cynics tell me that Britain is going to the dogs, I remind them about the Chelsea Flower Show.
No other nation on Earth treats a gardeners’ fashion parade as a quasi-religious festival, attended by the head of state and everybody else who can beg, borrow or steal a ticket.
Even amid Monday’s breezes and showers, everybody at the show was smiley, because this is one of those annual events that lifts the spirit, stirs the soul, makes us all reach for our trowels, determined to try harder.
The Hastingses have been worshipping at Chelsea for several decades now, and never fail to thrill anew at every iris and foxglove, peony and allium, unsullied by weather or careless footsteps, without a weed in sight. No slug dares to raise its slimy head; no dogs, like ours at home, roll in the lavender.
Nico Bacon, president of the Royal Horticultural Society, said in his opening day speech: “You do not see the blood, the sweat, the tears and the angst that go into every exhibit, but believe me they are there.”
I know what he means, because for years, when I was a newspaper editor, we sponsored gardens at Chelsea.
I remember the frightful pre-show traumas when a snowstorm got at the roses, or a yew hedge succumbed to marsh fever (or whatever ailment yew hedges get). The designer simply flew in replacements, and added another few zillions to his bill.
The point of what I am saying, of course, is that the exhibits represent film-set gardening, rather than the real thing as you and I know it. In no real herbaceous border does one see such a riot of plants flowering together with the precision of a chorus line raising its lovely legs.
Mostly Chelsea is about an appearance of perfection. My wife Penny and I were among a crowd admiring a descending curtain of water at a fall - and indeed, most of this year’s gardens have water features which work flawlessly.
At home, by contrast, the fountain in our pond gets clogged with newts every week or two, and whenever I visit rich friends with elaborate rills and streams, their pumping systems are switched off either because they are broken, or because they bregrudge the cosmic electricity bill to run them, except on high days and holy days.
Of course there are fashions in gardens as much as in everything else. One reason for the general excellence of this year’s show is that there is much more variety in the style of the main exhibits than is sometimes the case, though I noticed that slate seems big on several stands, and there is a vogue for putting box balls in the midst of borders.
Above all, we love Chelsea as a palace of dreams; a place that enables us to imagine the sort of gardens we shall have at home when we die or win the Lottery.
Penny and I make copious notes, listing the stuff we shall order when we return to planet Earth.
L’Occidentale have sponsored a charmingly simple Provencale-style sunken garden, designed by James Basson, with some grasses we shall try at home. We scribbled down lists of clematises and dahlias, varieties of primula candelabra and peony, too. I took a stern line, however, when Penny enthused madly about the Brewin Dolphin garden, created around paths and stairways of slates laid on their ends.
I said that I am half a century too old to lay millions of slates like that myself, and would need to write another five or six books to pay for somebody else to do so.
The side shows at Chelsea are part of its charm. The little steel band playing old Harry Belafonte numbers beside the Grenada exhibit; the hideously garish Thai stand, which is enough to persuade one never to visit a garden east of Dover.
Most of the garden sculptures, of which there are masses, make gnomes seem classy. The prices suggest that they are intended for either Russian oligarchs or British bankers, who nowadays have to spend their millions on their own homes and gardens because no one speaks to them when they go outside.
There was an array of half-life-size prancing horses, priced at around £30 000 apiece, while some pleasant coiled wire geese turn the scale at £6 000 for three. Penny quite fancied those birds, but I told her that a plastic wishing well would be nearer our bracket.
Guest speaker at Monday’s opening was Sir William Castell, chairman of the Wellcome Trust, who talked about the prospect of a global population of nine billion by 2050, three-quarters of whom will live in cities. It is vital, he said, to find new ways to connect these huge urban populations to the natural world, and he must be right. Those of us lucky enough to spend most of our lives surrounded by green things know that a concrete, steel and glass existence is not a whole life at all.
Max Hasting, Daily Mail