Hampton Court Palace Flower Show

Bloomin' trenches!

The 2014 Hampton Court flower show was, as always, fantastic.  The stand out garden had to be the WWI shell-crater garden, complete with actors explaining what life was like in the trenches (shite!).

A man appreciating art.

It’s crowded this year.  It takes more than low cloud the colour of lead and the sort of humidity normally associated with latitudes and morals that make it socially acceptable to drink gin at/for lunch to put off the RHS faithful, but the promise of good(ish) weather has brought out, well, the fair-weather show-goers too.

Accordingly, you need to be mindful of personal space.  This is not just because every second person appears to be dragging a small plastic trolley behind them, like the horticultural equivalent of the wee wifie out for her Saturday messages with her tartan shopper, but also because many people have plants in bags.  The bags themselves contain just an average plant pot with soil, but the plants can extend up to three foot and more, and swing along beside their owner like fragile metronomes. 

(The etiquette on accidentally beheading what was, five minutes ago, a prized purchase is to act casual, use the damaged flower as a buttonhole and deny all responsibility, explaining that you were by the Pimms tent when this tragedy must have happened.  For this reason you must always be drinking Pimms).

Pimms makes the crowds tolerable, that’s why it’s the perfect summer drink, it also makes spectating at summer sporting events bearable.  If your team loses at cricket, it takes five days for this to happen.  That’s a long time to travel from a state of anxiety to disappointment.  Pimms is the HS2 of mood enhancers, it takes you straight from anxiety to relaxed without all that faffing around at weepy, depressed and angry.

Also part of the crowd this year, mobility scooters, chariots of dire. 

Now, I am all for people who would not normally be able to enjoy events being able to enjoy them to their fullest, but isn’t that what telly is for?  I’ve never been to the British Grand Prix, but I’ve watched it on telly and, unlike anyone who actually went along, I was home opening a beer just as soon as the winner crossed that finish line. 

More needs to be done on integrating these things into crowds I think, as a muted peeping noise is just not enough warning that some sod driving what appears to be a small car is barrelling up behind you with a sense of entitlement and a small child on their lap.  Maybe they could double as plant porters next year.

Scarecrow?  Or cunning device used to fool German prison guards?  For months at morning parade they thought this was 4287623 Private 'Pinky' Brown.

The plant porters were much in evidence this year, youths with wheelbarrows ferrying around purchases for folk.  But really, plant porters, must you all snooze in your wheelbarrows when not working?  Just because it forms a stock shot on the BBC show coverage each year doesn’t mean you have to recreate the scene.  This is an RHS show, not Titchmarsh cos-play.  It’s like some twisted Anne Geddes tableaux.  Worse, a gangling teen asleep in a barrow just looks like another Friday night when the agricultural college students have drunk themselves insensible.

As well as the more ordinary examples of show-goer, there are some rare blooms, that special breed that leave their garden only a few times a year, this being one of them, and are identifiable by having dirt under their fingernails so old it will form the basis of a ‘Time Team’ special later in the year, and by having at least one garment fastened using something normally used in the garden, such as twine, or a dibber.

Over at the growing tastes marquee, one thought occurred – I fucking hate the recession.  Back when Tony Blair or Gordon Brown was PM, you could come here and be insensible of free samples of gin within the hour.  Now, the cheese samples resemble the crumbs left over when one has had one last go at the cheese-board on Christmas Day.  One bloke was even handing out samples of cheese with tweezers.

Also, parents, just because young children get into the show for free does not mean that you are required to bring them.

RHS Hampton Court 2007 - the cocktail!

There’s no doubt that all the gardens, show and otherwise, at the RHS show at Hampton Court were immaculate. Some were spectacular, some beautiful, some more than others. And some had bars!

"Waiters start to worry what will happen when the booze runs out."

There’s a lot you can do with a smallish plot, and one of the common themes this year appeared to be sticking a bar in the corner of it and giving away booze in the hope of a) securing the ‘people’s choice’ prize through outright bribery or b) getting one of the increasingly schloshed crowd to sign up to buying a crate of whatever it was you were giving away in thimble-full glasses.

From a drinking point of view – the day went well, starting at the Gran-marnier garden with the established tactic of ‘one for me, one for my friend’, then on through sherry, onto Australian reds, whites and sparkling before a soft landing at the excellent Torres garden and some robust Spanish red.

"Olives are delicious...obviously somebody must come up with some way of making alcohol from them!"

Remarking to a couple of welly-sporting women in front of me at the booze queue at one of the gardens ‘I believe there are plants here too’, they fixed me with a look and replied ‘really? We only come for the clothes.’. Obviously they are refugees from the Country Living tent.

There was a lot that was remarkable about this year’s show. I loved the many ‘drought resistant’ gardens, especially those being pumped out given the constant rain in the last months. I loved the ‘conservative values’ garden, the Oak, the bedding plants shaped like a British fields, the tree that doubles as a lynching post for asylum seekers and the secueters that can be used to castrate crims – but best of all the thick hedges for upper class tories to have sex with call-girls behind.

"Ah, a grove of metal trees...what was in that last gin?"

The day ended very well at the Country Living tent with the purchase of sausages and organic Gin. Not only was this gin good for me, it was good for the environment and the economy of the organic world, I was helping pandas and polar bears by buying gin….or something. One thing is for sure, the guy on the stall made the greatest small gin and tonics – the sample glasses are lilliputan and are normally filled with neat gin (they are the size of a shot glass). I insisted he make me a gin and tonic and I could see that he was glad that he’s had the request, as he profusely apologised for having no lime. I cursed him for a barbarian and drank my gin.

When one tired of helping penguins, one could redress the balance and visit the British Airways stall. Here were two club class seats and, judging by the number of people having their photograph taken in them, reclining with their bottles of gin (or was that just me?), I think BA profits are set to rise, even if, because of security scares, their aeroplanes do not.


"This year's Gold Medal for fricking creepy stall...stone children! Aggghhhhhh, Aggghhhh! Stone children! Children that have been petrified by the witch at the end of the village! No? Just me? Well, the stall owner looked like some sort of ciramic peado!"