Where are the plants and the people?
Yesterday I had one of those moments when you have to pinch yourself to realise you really are in a place. I had arrived early and had to check with the lady on the gate that I was in the right place. She affirmed that this was the main entrance to the RHS Chelsea flower show.
The main gates to the Royal Hospital and the RHS Chelsea Flower Show
No flowers, no crowds, no ticket and bag check, just an elderly Chelsea Pensioner slowly walking up to the main gate to drop something in the postbox. This is the day that designers and constructors get to visit the site to check out their garden plot. I am with the Planting Design Collective (Will, Kate and Sally) who are designing The Missing Collector Garden sponsored by Project Giving Back for the charity Plant Heritage. Gwen Hinds the charity’s Chief Executive is here. First impressions were that it is such a small area. How do so many construction teams, planting teams and designers get everything off and on this small site? The show manager Gemma put it simply - 'With military precision!’ You can hear how we all reacted in the clip below!
I confess that I have a very poor sense of direction. I have visited Chelsea for the past few years with my sister, brother-in-law and cousin, (yes the maker of the hi-vis jackets) and each time we turn to Des as the one person with a sense of direction to lead us around the site so we don’t miss anything and have our coffee, picnic lunch and cup of the tea along the way. I am wondering if today’s visit will finally help me to orientate myself?
Around me people are heading to the plots. The ones with balcony gardens peel off to the left to head to their section. We walk past the main avenue designers and reach ‘the triangle’, the location for the All About Plants gardens. Suddenly it seems very real. Will tells me that there are just over a 100 days to go. I watch a huddle of gardeners, pouring over the map together, working out exactly where they will be on the triangle. A couple of people start to pace out their plot and then someone pulls out a tape measure. There are discussions about the gaps between the backs of the gardens where ‘stuff’ can be stored.
The site of the Chelsea flower show, in the top left is the memorial that will be in the middle of the Marquee.
There is a feeling of excitement. All of these gardens have been in the planning for well over a year. The next time they are on this site, they will be building them. We get chatting to a veteran constructor and ask what advice he would give to newbies. "Never think you’re ahead of schedule”, I think this must translate to never think you can take your foot off the gas! The show manager Gemma seems very calm and experienced and she says her job is to solve problems when they arise and I suspect keep everyone calm as the pressure becomes more intense.
I feel very privileged that I am in a position to record the progress of this garden over the next few months for the podcast. The Offshoot episodes between February and May will tell the story. We’ll talk to the designers but also the plant collection holders who have donated plants and a few others along the way. If you want to know more about the charity Plant Heritage you can find out here.
In other news I have discovered that if you want to use ChatGPT you first need to tell it the persona you wish it to take on! So don’t just begin the conversation, tell it all about your project and then tell ‘it’ that you need ‘it’ to be a, so for Our Plant Stories that’s a marketing manager with a specialism in media. Who knew!
Today Friday - I am hoping to find out about Japanese bananas for a possible plant story and I need to work out the rights to an image I would like to use of a lost plant. It could be tricky to try to find the plant, if we can’t see it.
It feels like the count-down to series 4 is well and truly on…
Have a lovely weekend.
Sally
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