The Chelsea Flower show is brilliant. Not only does it look and smell like a dream, but it’s also a source of constant boundary-pushing innovation and inspiration in the way we as humans can live, and thrive, harmoniously with nature.
People who sew and people who sow seem to share a lot in common, most notably a genuine care for nature, wildlife and the planet. Crafting and gardening are both acts of creation and nurture, using our hands and minds to shape our environments in positive ways. Chelsea this year is chock-full of such new ways of thinking about how we rub along better with the rest of the planets inhabitants.
My highlight was Tom Massey and Je Ahn’s amazing (gold medal winning) Avanade Intelligent Garden, an urban forest featuring a building constructed from cast blocks of extraordinary mycelium bonded wood chip, created by the brilliant Seb Cox (thank you Seb for the gushing praise for my book), filled with huge sculptural living fungi that they christened ‘the mush pit’.
I loved the Songbird Survival Trusts super songbird-friendly garden featuring thorny broadleafed cockspur which stops cats from climbing it, evergreen yew for nesting and loads of plants with tasty berries. Seawilding is an oyster and seagrass restoration project, so naturally seagrass, the big daddy of carbon capturing plants, was centre of attention, planted in a giant rockpool inspired by the coastal landscape of Loch Craignish where the charity is based. Also (strangely) in the category of lovely things is a space-age looking toilet-in-a-shed, star attraction at the Gates Foundation’s Garden of the Future. Designed for regions without sanitation this super loo converts your doings into soil improving compost, allowing you to grow all sorts of drought-friendly food crops. Everywhere the garden designers were looking to innovate, creating ever more nature and planet friendly outdoor spaces.
It was also lovely to be stopped by so many people who just wanted to say how much they loved what we’re doing at Community Clothing, including the wife of one of the RHS judges who stopped me to tell me that her husband had been performing his judgely duties decked out in a green Community Clothing Chore Jacket, and Garden designer Nick Burton (his Down’s Syndrome Scotland Garden won a silver gilt) proudly sporting his yellow and tan Parlick trainers, which he’d kept box fresh for opening day. Both claimed that their clobber had been subject to as much admiration as the gardens they were judging/creating.
Also just really loved messing about in Bob Smith’s amazing ‘all schools should be art schools’ art shed of dreams in the Hospitalfields garden.
The show is on until Saturday, and there’s still sun forecast for later this week. If you can get to London, it’s a real treat.
