Cape Town - The South African team has royalty to thank after notching up a Silver Gilt at the Chelsea Flower Show in London.
The team was battling to complete its stand for its 40th exhibit, after some of the feature plants were held up at customs.
But volunteers Jenny Badenhorst and Jo Lankester dashed around and persuaded some of the other exhibitors to donate plants that would fit in with the design.
Prince Harry’s Lesotho garden was one which donated kniphofias and aloes. His garden was designed for his charity Sentebale to mimic the look of Lesotho, the country in which it helps vulnerable, HIV-positive children.
Prince Harry has been associated with the show since 2013, when he designed a tribute garden to his mother, the late Princess Diana.
“It was a race against time,” said designer David Davidson.
“We advised the judges of our predicament and these factors were taken into account when judging.”
Other plants were donated from Kientzler in Germany while Australia donated proteas, aloes, polygala and the use of their forklift to assist. France donated juncea and grasses.
This year’s display included a retrospective tableau of memorable exhibits, as well as a display of “Plants South Africa Gave the World”.
There was a also a tribute to the work of British floral designer Pam Simcock, who was responsible for the design and creation of the Kirstenbosch-South Africa exhibits staged at Chelsea on behalf of the South African government for the first 18 years of its participation in the show.
South African National Biodiversity Institute chief executive Tanya Abrahamse said a Silver Gilt was a fitting tribute to the design skill and the dedicated work of the team that put the exhibit together.
“The opportunity to showcase different aspects of our rich and unique biodiversity on this international platform is one that we value highly.”
Cape Argus
* The Independent in London reports that garden designer Dan Pearson, who returned to the Chelsea Flower Show this year after an absence of 11 years, has won Best Show Garden and a gold medal for his recreation of a trout stream at Chatsworth, the Derbyshire home of the Duke of Devonshire.
The award was announced on Tuesday by the Royal Horticultural Society, the organisers of the yearly show, along with the rest of the medal awards for both the show gardens and the nurseries exhibiting in the Great Pavilion.
Chelsea is the most prestigious flower show in the world and features the cream of British gardening along with a raft of international exhibits, such as Kamelia Bin Zaal's Beauty of Islam garden, and her Beauty of Kanji garden, inspired by a suburb of Singapore.
Pearson is one of Britain's most respected garden designers, but while his clients might be upscale (the show garden is sponsored by Laurent-Perrier champagne), his approach is very green - in every sense of the word.
His designs are typically naturalistic and relaxed, but this artless effect is underpinned by fantastic attention to detail.
His Chelsea garden was inspired by the Crystal Palace designer Joseph Paxton's rockery, built for the 6th Duke of Devonshire in 1842, and even the weeds were specially grown, so the plants would be at different stages of growth as they would in the wild.
It looks as if someone has picked up a bit of English countryside and dropped it down in the centre of London.
The design features a stream meandering through grasses and wildflowers - such as primulas, campion and golden alexanders - overlooked by massive piles of stone. In Paxton's original rockery, the largest stone, known as the Wellington Rock is nearly 14m high.
Naturalistic planting featured in several of the gold-medal winning gardens, including the Brewin Dolphin garden designed by Darren Hawkes, the Cloudy Bay garden by brothers Harry and David Rich, and the L'Occitane garden, which evoked a back garden in the Mediterranean town of Grasse, capital of the perfume industry.
Another gold medal winner was the Morgan Stanley Healthy Cities Garden, designed by Chris Beardshaw, which will be recreated in Poplar, east London, after the show ends as part of a community garden project.
Sentebale, designed by Matt Keightley to highlight the work of Prince Harry's Lesotho children's charity, won a silver-gilt medal (the second-highest award) as did Bin Zaal's Beauty of Islam garden. The Chelsea show gardens are not judged against each other, but according to how well the judges feel the designer has fulfilled his or her brief.
The Dark Matter Garden, designed by Howard Miller in collaboration with the National Schools Observatory, won Best Fresh Garden.
In the Great Pavilion, Hillier Nurseries were celebrating their 70th gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show.
Based in Hampshire, the nursery was founded 150 years ago, and their 180-acre gardens, established by Sir Harold Hillier in 1953, form one of the world's most important plant collections.
David Austin Roses are regular gold medal winners at Chelsea, and yesterday Claire Austin, daughter of David, also won gold for her display of bearded irises.