…I’ve been trialled and tested and let me tell you this:
I wouldn’t be welcome in my own garden…I wouldn’t be able to take it. I know this because I’ve been in bed for the past two weeks with the most almighty plague which I haven’t been able to shake without the help of evil, pesky pills (the sort that will, no doubt, kill us all in the end anyway)…
All this, I suspect, because it’s been a bit colder and wetter for a bit longer than normal. It irritates me beyond measure.
I yearn to be a geranium, but I am actually an orchid, FFS (more of which later)…
If I didn’t have a small child to look after, I might well stay in bed until May you know….
It’s the centenery of the Chelsea Flower Show, … Have you got your tickets? If not, then I have TWO to give away, for the Wednesday, courtesy of my lovely friends at the RHS. See below if you want to get your hands on them.
But first, I’ve been getting excited about the show from my snotty bed. May is a favourite time of year for me – Newness and the knowledge that it’s going to be *relatively* safe to go outside without being hit with a stabbing wind or lashing rain…
It’s very difficult to get a proper idea of which show gardens are going to make me go oooh this year, but here are a few (in no particular order) that I’m getting a bit excited about:
Jo Thompson’s FERA garden
A garden that starkly draws our attention to the fact that our trees are under threat from pests and diseases. It’ll have an avenue of DEAD trees in it…beauty and ugliness side by side.
Adam Frost’s Homebase Garden
This is being billed as the ultimate modern family garden, with an emphasis on helping children to understand the natural world. Lots of wild-life attractors here, along with a place to sit, eat and play.
Kate Gould’s Wasteland
A garden built on waste ground, and full of recycled materials sourced from that site.
Ulf Nordfjell’s Laurent Perrier Garden
I just know this is going to have me come over all dreamy and peculiar…sucker that I am, for softness and romance.
Christopher Bradley-Hole’s Daily Telegraph Garden
This is supposed to echo the making of the English landscape – you know, the way in which it got all patchworky with fields. Full of English native trees and shrubs, and the blocks will represent those fields. I like the Japanesey edge to it as well.
It’s tough to get a proper view of the show gardens, which is why my favourite bit of Chelsea is pretty much always lurking around in the big tent, taking hundreds of pictures of exquisiteness and listening in on the experts giving advice on how to grow stuff.
Now: those tickets.
If you want them just do the following:
1. Enter your email into the ‘Subscribe’ box on the right of this page. (Don’t worry, you won’t get bombarded with emails; it just means that these posts will go to your inbox…I only post about once a month). The reason I want you to do this is because I’m planning on doing some new stuff, just for subscribers – little videos and extra projects that subscribers will get before anybody else.
2. Tweet or share this post on Facebook (you don’t HAVE to do that, but it would be very gorgeous if you did). You can find my Twitter and facebook page just up there on the right, underneath the subscribe box. Either just re-tweet or share straight from my twitter or facebook page, or hit the ‘Tweet’ or ‘Share’ buttons at the bottom of this post, but remember to tag me by name so I know about it.
Twitter: @laetitiamaklouf
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3. Put a little comment in the box below telling me your favourite thing about Chelsea (this can of COURSE, be food, or gardening gloves, or GNOMES) x
37 Comments
I would LOVE to win these tickets!! I have only fallen in love with gardening in the last year or so, so i haven’t ever been to the show! Therefore my favourite thing would have to be that i have only just come across the term ‘Chealsea Chop’, think its ace and plan on trying it out this year in my first proper garden.. xx
Lucky enough to be invited last year by Brewin Dolphin and had a fantastic reception on their Best in Show garden by Cleve West – mixing with the great and the good! Atmosphere, as ever, at RHS Chelsea is always first class.
hi,
i entered my e-mail to subscribe n a lil box popped up saying click on confirmation e-mail. i haven’t recieved one. i’ve tried a few times
Hi Laetitia,
I’d like to visit Chelsea Flower Show for my first time.
I have a university degree in foresta and a PhD in botany and now I’m working as a gardener in Florence. I’m studying garden design! I love plants
, nature, english gardens!
See you!
Enrico
I am signed up to your list, but I never get any posts – I don’t know why. Might be the uni server. But I’m picking them up on twitter.
I don’t yet have a favourite thing about Chelsea because I’ve never been, but I do want to go this year. I’m hoping that Chelsea Fringe might turn out to be one of my favourite things http://www.chelseafringe.com/ But I will also be looking eagerly for the ways that gardens perform for us, both by expressing ideas and a bit more literally (for instance through features that move and transform, like water or light).
I’m not really after your ticket, just taking 5 minutes to skive off trying to write an article and enjoy thinking about gardens. Hoping to do some writing and thinking about gardens and performance next year, once I’ve finished the current project. All best. Hope you are feeling better.
I’m afraid that I’ve never been to the Chelsea Flower Show (I sooo desperately want to go!). I love watching all the coverage of it on the tv and looking at all the gardens on the internet, they are truly inspiring. My favourite thing about the Chelsea Flower Show probably is
the small specialist plant growers that they cover who host stalls there. I have found some truly great companies who are so passionate about the plants they grow so it’s great that they get the nationwide coverage that they truly do deserve as they really do work hard.
Dear Laetitia,
I was given your first book as a present few years ago and since then I follow your blog and suggestion. I’ve never been to Chelsea as I live in Italy, in the tuscan countryside, but I’ve been thinking of going several times….. Maybe the time has come =)….. Anyhow I wish to thank you for all the beautiful ideas and for having introduced me to some plants that now I love much suck as Ceropegia….
Ciao, Laura
Last year a friend very kindly gave me a ticket to Chelsea, I had such an amazing day that I’d love to be able to return the favour especially in this centenary year.
Laetitia,
I have never been to Chelsea, but would love to go. I started gardening about two years ago when my son Olly was very young. I was inspired by your books (bit creepy. Sorry) and Sarah Raven.
I have tried to fill the garden with pollinator friendly plants, grow a few veg, a very small pond and a small cutting garden. I was completley unprepared for the way the garden has drawn me in. Olly loves all the bugs that come into the garden, and he doesn’t flinch when a bee buzzes around his head. I started a blog to keep a record of it for me and my family.
It would be fab to visit Chelsea, just to soak up the atmosphere and maybe come home with some more ideas for my little plot.
Leanne xx
I just LOVE the CFS!! It is SO inspirational and my sort of art gallery! Nature at its finest! x
My favourite thing at Chelsea is the small gardens. Great way to get planting combo ideas at realistic scale for those of us with a normal size patch of earth and weeds
I was taken as a surprise birthday treat last year and walked around had the most lovely afternoon. Favourite display? Hard to say but I did like the Brewin Dolphin.
I would just love to go again.
I would love to take my daughter to chelsea… she has just discovered gardening and its wonderful as we can now share a real love of plants and growing together. We have just taken on an allotment together and some design ideas for attractive and productive plots would be wonderful…. and i love the gardening gloves!!
For me, the BEST thing about going to Chelsea
. Oh, and we’ve never
xx
would be spending the day with my Mum, oooohh- ing
and aaaahh- ing about the beautiful designs and purchases
we’d like to make. Gardening is just one of the many
things my Mum and I have in common but can’t preach about
to the ‘non-appreciators’
been and would LOVE to go!!
I am so excited, this will be my first Chelsea ever. After years of watching it on tv from my fourth story, gardenless flat in Glasgow, I live in London! With a garden! So actually, I can’t tell you what my favourite thing is because I’ve never been. It’s probably going to be something really thrilling, like spotting someone off Gardener’s Question Time.
(sorry you’re sick. I’m an orchid too. I wish I was a geranium. Or maybe a cactus.)
I so want to take Lucy, my daughter, to Chelsea this year. It’s special for us because she has recently survived a cancer scare and operation and she has always wanted to go to Chelsea. I managed to get her to Tatton Park last year and we had a great day, but I know Chelsea is the one she really, really wants to see. We both love gardens, flowers, trees, shopping and eating and I think that Chelsea will fulfly meet all of those requirements! Fingers crossed xxx
Ive not got a favourite bit as i’ve not been before, but would I would really enjoy going round all the show gardens.
I’ve never been to Chelsea before but I imagine I’d love the show gardens, looking at them for inspiration for my own new garden I have just moved into (the first I’ve ever had with a real flowerbed!). I brought all my pots with me from my flat (grown with the help of The Virgin Gardener) and can’t wait to get started on my new patch.
I’d love to go to Chelsea Garden show. Went to Hampton Court last year as it is my local show.
xxxxx
And I haven’t got a favourite… thing! For Chelsea! As I have never been before.
But the gardening bug has taken me and I’d love to work in those events.
Being a novice and proud!
I love the Chelsea show, i look forward to it every year, it’s me and my friends day out x
I would love to win these tickets, I have never been to the Chelsea Garden Show. I moved house 2 years ago and inherited a large garden with a huge array of shrubs and overgrown weeds. I am slowly getting to know what is in this garden and hope to make more of it next year. I own both of your books which have fired my interest in gardening, although I had no idea how hard work it actually is
Hi Laetitia,
Although I have taken my Mother to RHS Wisley she has never been to the Chelsea Flower Show. It would be a wonderful experience for her and would raise her spirits as she suffers from Arthitis!
My mums birthday is the 25the of May and so always falls in Chelsea week. She helps me out all year long with children and all the other things mums do and I take her to Chelsea and we wander, eat ice cream and I buy her a trinket that I don’t like but she loves! I probably dont deserve the tickets though as I have just read uo but I wanted to share anyway. Thanks Laetitia.
My favourite thing about chelsea is its own self-assuredness that it is the height of horticultural excellence. I missed out on tix this year through poor planning and preparation. I know the designers and exhibitors won’t fall victim to that but would love to check for myself.
Favourite thing about Chelsea: meeting LOTS of other obsessive gardeners and seein what they’re buying
Never managed to get tickets for Chelsea, but had an amazing time at the Physic Garden for my birthday last year.
Now chomping at the bit for spring to arrive to get my green fingers on…plus it would be great to meet Titchmarsh.
I love nature and the wonderful things that people do with it. I have never been to a large flower show before only watched from afar on my sofa. I imagine the Chelsea Flower show to be magical, inspiring and glittering from all that gold and silver given out. It would be just wonderful to get off my sofa and get lost in the flowers this year. Thanks Jenny
It has always been a dream to go to Chelsea but I have never been lucky with tickets. I would like inspriration on how to re-vamp my garden – it has been just a lawn with borders for too long. Hopefully Chelsea would provide good ideas that won’t break the bank!
Following on Twitter and RT’d as @kathrynann1.
Following and sharing on Facebook
The best thing about Chelsea for me is the ambiance, I always find myself chatting to a vast array of folk, including a few lovable eccentrics, and love the fact that we are all bound together by our love of plants!
Rt’d @_sal1978_
One of my dreams would be to go the Chelsea Flower Show.
I love any thing to do with gardening.
British gardening it’s my secret dream and I’ve never been at Chelsea…need to say more?
Drool__________________
Second attempt …my first post has vanished .already signed for nl and liked on fb
My favourite thing about Chelsea is that as soon as you enter you realise that there is no limit to what you can imagine a garden to be like, from the smallest innovative ideas to the most ambitious show gardens, it never fails to inspire.
followong on Twitter @i_saw_it_first
I’ve never been in person to Chelsea, but watching the TV coverage truly lifts my heart. The creations, which I do realise must hardly be an unanxious feat for their creators, absolutely magically relax me and transport me to different landscapes and countries. And yes, seeing what the celebrities are wearing is also fun….
I love the show gardens, but it is hard to think what I like best!
The whole show is blooming marvelous!!!
Would love a chance to go again this year!
I’ve never been to Chelsea, but I would love to go and it’s on my wish list.. my sister is going this year so i want her to take lots of photos for me..:-) I love watching the show gardens on TV, especially how they capture mood and atmosphere in a garden, I like getting little tips that I can fool myself that i’m recreating a designer garden in my patch out the back. We moved to a house last year that has virtually no plants, so i have dreams to turn it into a lush cottagey jungle (when i can afford the plants and the odd tree:-) ) I love your blog having just viewed it via neom.. It looks beautiful and is uplifting just reading it and looking at the photos…
Who is the winner??