Frances Lincoln Ltd www.franceslincoln.com CONTENTS RHS Chelsea Flower Show: A Centenary Celebration Copyright © Frances Lincoln 2013 Text copyright © Brent Elliott 2013 Photographs copyright © see page 194 First Frances Lincoln edition: 2013 Brent Elliott has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and INTRODUCTION ..... 1 Patents Act 1988 (UK). All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a 1 retrieval system or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, BEFORE CHELSEA photocopying, recording or otherwise, 1827–1913 ..... 4 without either permission in writing from the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying. In the United Kingdom such licences are issued by the 2 Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. FIRST FLOWERING AT THE ROYAL HOSPITAL 1913–16 ..... 14 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-0-7112-3451-2 3 Printed in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China by BETWEEN THE WARS C&C Offset Printing in January 2013 1919–39 ..... 36 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 4 FROM AUSTERITY TO A BRAVE NEW WORLD 1947–60 ..... 70 5 THE TREND TOWARDS POPULISM THE 1960S & 1970S ..... 90 6 IN THE GLARE OF THE MEDIA THE 1980S & 1990S ..... 124 7 THE ASCENDANCY OF STYLE 2000–2013 ..... 158 PREVIOUS PAGES Crowds at the Chelsea Show, 1934. RIGHT The Ecover Chelsea Pensioners’ 2005 INDEX ..... 189 garden, designed by Julian Dowle. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ..... 194 BUILDING THE SHOW GARDENS MY CHELSEA I have been involved with the RHS Chelsea Flower Show since 1994. My first garden was Christopher Bradley-Hole’s Explorer’s Roof Garden. Since then I have built twenty-three show gardens, twenty of which have won Gold. Eight of the gardens The Society’s contract with the Royal Hospital allows contractors to transport larger plants. Cranes have been used since the have won Best in Show. to enter the site three weeks before the show. They have a little interwar years at least, and are now easier to manipulate than My best moment was the Chanel garden in 1999. We didn’t get Best in Show but over a fortnight in which to take the gardens from lawn to their predecessors. There are mains connections for toilets at we should have, in my opinion. We were told by the selection panel that we wouldn’t finished product. Faith and GeoffW hiten said in their account two points in the grounds (show visitors are accommodated in that when they arrive ‘all that is to be seen of our garden are a few Portakabins). All mains connections for water features have to get the hornbeam into leaf, but we did, with the help of a large glasshouse and a lot of wooden pegs banged into the grass’. Then, as work begins in the be established before any building can take place. positive thinking. And the parterre was all built in advance – a first at Chelsea. background on erecting the Great Pavilion, the garden makers At the end of the show, all the building works have to be Chelsea is so deep within my DNA that I don’t know what I would do without get to work. The process begins with the arrival of heavy lorries undone, and all materials removed from the site, within five days. it; it’s been part of my life for nearly twenty years, so it’s difficult to remember life bringing materials. Modern materials have somewhat reduced The RHS now runs a recycling scheme for distributing unwanted before it. I have been lucky enough to work with a lot of very talented designers the burden of work – literally, because plastic containers are hardcore and other materials to other building projects – in 2012, over the years and it’s been fascinating seeing how the show has developed. The much lighter than the wooden tubs that once had to be used to local projects run in tandem with the Olympics. gardens are much more sophisticated than they used to be and the budgets are vast in comparison to twenty years ago. And the sponsors are pretty focused on winning, too! But for me, building a show garden is the best example of how to build a team. The focus tends to be on the designer, but in reality these show gardens only come to life if the forty or fifty people working on the garden really buy into the vision and work as a team. Without that, you are lost. It’s quite an emotional moment when you see a year’s work finally come to fruition. Then in a flash of an eye, it’s all gone. You pause for breath and then, after a few minutes’ rest, you start worrying about the next year. It never stops. Mark Fane, garden builder and nurseryman (Crocus) OPPOSITE Above: a seven-ton granite rock being moved to form part of Gavin Jones’s 1929 rock garden. Below left: Chelsea 1936: workmen assembling a rock garden, with the supporting pillars for the marquee behind them. Below right: a stone construction from the 1938 Chelsea Show. LEFT Diarmuid Gavin’s Westland Magical Garden, the tower in the course of assembly, 2012. Right: constructing a garden, 1996. 1940s-50s? RHS CHELSEA FLOWER SHOW RHS CHELSEA FLOWER SHOW LEFT, ABOVE The Queen with her uncle Sir David Bowes-Lyon in 1955, her first visit to Chelsea since becoming Queen. LEFT, BELOW The Queen admiring flowers in the pavilion during a tour of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 1984. THE QUEEN at chelsea Princess Elizabeth grew up at Royal Lodge, in Windsor the Director of Kew, described the British flora as ‘an Great Park, the official residence of her parents, the Duke impoverished European flora’, and staged a reproduction and Duchess of York. Her mother, who had been born of an oak wood). Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, was an enthusiastic gardener. While However, the Queen did not attend Chelsea that she and her husband were still the Duke and Duchess of year. ‘At the RHS Chelsea Flower Show’, remarked the York, they had commissioned Eric Savill to create a garden Gardeners’ Chronicle, ‘we missed the Queen, but everybody in Windsor Great Park, near their official residence of understands just how many demands there must be upon Royal Lodge, and which they named the Savill Garden in her time in these weeks before and after the Coronation.’ his honour. She was to be involved all her life in the creation (Not to mention mourning for her grandmother, Queen of gardens. Her younger brother, Sir David Bowes-Lyon, Mary, who had died in March.) 1955 was the first year had joined the RHS Council in 1934, and become treasurer since her accession to the throne that she visited Chelsea. in 1948; in her daughter’s coronation year, on the death Thereafter she would attend every Chelsea except ten, with of Lord Aberconway, he became President, and served in either the Queen Mother or Princess Margaret generally that capacity until his death in 1961. So there was a well- attending in her place. In one of these fallow years, 1978, defined royal linkage with the Chelsea Show, and each year the Queen paid her first visit to Wisley, so perhaps that Sir David could be seen escorting his sister and/or his niece was a sufficient indulgence in the RHS for one year. around the show. In 1977, the Queen’s Silver Jubilee was celebrated by Princess Elizabeth’s involvement with the Chelsea show the Royal Parks in an exhibit within the marquee, with began early. When she was ten, it was reported in the a royal crown carried out in carpet bedding. The Golden press that, as Lord Aberconway said at the Society’s AGM, Jubilee in 2002 saw no specific celebrations. In 2012, the ‘little Princess Elizabeth, following the family tradition, Diamond Jubilee year, the RHS Lindley Library staged a was starting to plant a little garden of her own at Royal special exhibit of photographs of royal visits to Chelsea, Lodge.’ The RHS Council sent her tickets to Chelsea, as a and another of Royal Autographs (botanical designs on way of encouraging their future patron. vellum, signed by royal patrons). The Queen had signed an In 1952, she ascended the throne as Queen Elizabeth Autograph on succeeding to the throne; she and the Duke II, and her mother became Queen Elizabeth the Queen of Edinburgh now signed a new Autograph prepared by Mother. The new Queen became a royal patron of the the botanical artist Gillian Barlow. RHS that June. The following year saw her coronation, Of all the younger members of the royal family, it and Chelsea staged a special Commonwealth Exhibit to has been Prince Charles who has shown the greatest match the Empire Exhibit a decade and a half earlier. A enthusiasm for gardening, commissioning Rosemary special tent at the south-east corner of the Great Marquee Verey and others to create his garden at Highgrove, housed exhibits from South Africa, West and East Africa, commissioning the Highgrove Florilegium from a team of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the West Indies, India botanical artists, and doing much to promote green issues. and Pakistan, Ceylon, Malaya, Mauritius, St Helena, In 2012 he also became a royal patron of the RHS, and Bermuda, Malta, Cyprus and Britain (Professor Salisbury, signed an Autograph by Gillian Barlow. 76 77 FINISHING TOUCHES Gardens and exhibits must be put together in ten days on manager in 1987.