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LONDON – The Chelsea Flower Show – the world's most prestigious and lavish floral exhibition – kicked off on Tuesday with the Queen's visit to the luxurious and rustic tree house of her granddaughter in a sham campaign English pop-up, next to champagne tents and gin, already doing business in the morning sun.
Since 1913, with a short break from two world wars, the Chelsea show still manages to be fun and both fuddy-duddy and at the cutting edge of technology. It marks the beginning of the English summer social season, with gentlemen in straw hats, ladies in floral dresses. And it draws exhausted crowds of haunting plants to wander the converted greensward of the Royal Hospital and smell the roses waiting for patent.
That the loss of empire and the threat of Brexit are cursed, no one dies in the back yard just like Great Britain, which is still the largest gardening country in the world.
This year's large exhibition gardens were a tribute to the Yorkshire countryside, with a functioning canal lock; a Dubai lounge lounge with sand dune flavor; several "urban gardens" for guests with penthouses and lots of money (They were great, needed to green cities); a "garden of resilience," a first here which focuses on the changing climate of Britain (think yucca in Wessex, prickly pear in Kent); and a quiet, cool, green garden for the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), sponsors of the show, called the Back To Nature Garden.
This latter doozy was co-designed by Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, wife of a future king, Prince William.and mother of three heirs and savers.
Kate's "Woodland" was "inspired by memories of childhood … a place to leave the world, play, learn, discover and create special family memories," as described in the RHS.
Forests, says the brochure, are good for mental health and child development.
A hut in the trees perched on an old stump (cost unknown), dressed in deer horn oak, was the centerpiece. There was a stream of smooth pebbles in which to play, a swing on which to swing and a hollow log in which to crawl.
There was also a tipi made up of sticks, a raw bow and arrow, and a Pee Focus – the perfect setting to learn to play responsibly with matches and guns.
Queen Elizabeth II, dressed in a green coat over a purple and green dress, gave her great royal marks.
"It's very tidy," said the queen Tuesday morning, according to the report of the royal pool.
William and Kate's children visited each other over the weekend and were photographed, frolicking as they should, barefoot and perfect little outfits.
These exhibits and displays (the largest gardens occupy 2,800 square feet, the layout of a spacious home) can take weeks of feverish work to assemble., completely out of nothing, with "plantation teams" working there almost 24 hours a day, erecting mature elms, redwoods and cedars (transplanted).
One of the gardens this year included a temporary giant sequoia, 42 feet tall. He will live here until Saturday and will then be transferred elsewhere.
A seasoned garden designer confessed that they were composting most of the plants, which were at their peak for the show – although many survivors are now finding new homes in charitable gardens or new posh settings.
The overabundance of flowers, the perfect shabby-chic of cottage styles, is delusional. Each plant watering the next, everything is perfect. As they were hired as waiters, the gardens were already covered with bees.
You may want this garden.
You will never have this garden.
The art of re-creation is breathtaking.
Ferns, old woolly mosses, and wildflower peaks still in the air appear as you find them in the Grade II Grade Cottage in Somerset.
But none of that was here in April.
This year marks the 99th Chelsea Garden by designer Mark Gregory. His replica of a West Yorkshire canal and the caller's house required the efforts of 60 workers, with cranes and a hydraulic system.
People, there were already webs of spiders covered with dew!
Gregory said the show highlighted "one area we always succeed in, namely growing plants".
He said: "We were once a great industrial power. Not so much now, I would say. But in horticulture? We are hard to beat. "
Gregory said that plants for gardens and vases outnumbered edible crops in Britain in terms of gross domestic product.
The secret? "The climate is excellent, the weather is bad," he said, which means that it's raining a lot but not too much, and that it's cool but that it's not freezing. and that it is hot in the summer, but not in Kuwait.
England is crazy about plants since the Victorians have made an obsession with it. The Chelsea Flower Show is "a showcase for the world," said Raymond Evison, who cultivates clematis on the island paradise of Guernsey, a tax haven off the coast of England. It sells 2 million plants a year, almost half of them in the United States.
The latest trend? "More free time but less time for gardening," he said. Customers want plants that bloom in summer but do not require much pruning.
Another trend? "The Chinese," he says. They love the Chelsea flower show.
It was Chelsea's first concert since the death of David Austin, the most famous plant breeder in Britain, is said to have restored the scent of the modern rose. But his family and company continued, with two new roses and a "Secret Garden" themed display.
Designer Sarah Eberle has created the "Garden of Resilience" for this year's show. "I wanted to deliver a message: Come on, climate change is real, it's here, it's coming."
What would she grow in her English cottage garden of the future?
"It's not the future," she corrected.
It would plant cacti, aloe and yucca. It would plant drought- and pest-resistant trees that can withstand new extremes – too hot, too cold, and at the wrong time.
She manages her water better.
Eberle has been a garden designer for 40 years. She offered an observation. At the beginning of her career, wisdom disappeared: a gardener here cut her perennial herbaceous plants to the ground in late October. They slept during the winter and pushed back in the spring.
But now? "They are tall at Christmas," she says. "It's only in my years. There is no more difficult winter. This could be missed by many people. But a gardener? A gardener sees it with his own eyes. "
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