DIDN'T WE HAVE A LOVELY TIME, THE DAY WE WENT TO CHELSEA

Hello everyone

I certainly did have a very lovely time at Chelsea on Wednesday.  The weather was very kind to us, but boy did I suffer the day afterwards!  Sore feet, aching back and arms as long as broom handles from carrying lots of goodies away with us.

The wonderful thing about Chelsea is that you get to see some weird and fabulous designs - some you think 'I wonder what was in their mind when they produced this design' as well as 'I wonder why the judges gave this a gold award' and sometimes 'I wonder why the judges didn't give this one an award'.  Who knows what goes on in their mind, but it is the usual and the unusual that makes Chelsea fantastic every year.

My plant purchases included some more lovely Heucheras, Fuchsias and some Clematis, which will be collected by my Chelsea-loving friend when she is on holiday in Norfolk next month.  Among my selection is this stunning very, very dark red/purple one (the picture does not do it justice because the real colour is much darker):

I also bought two other dark red ones and two creamy white ones (one produces double and single blooms).

I love sculpture in the garden (not that I have much) and these took my fancy - a little too big for my garden but, hey, perhaps I can reproduce them in pottery:

I love lilies, but we had to give up on them a few years ago when we discovered that they are highly toxic to cats.  If you are owned by a cat, you will know they love to put their paws and noses on things they shouldn't, so they had to go - the lilies that is, not our cats.  However, the perfume from these flowers is amazing and makes me want to find a way of growing them without hurting my cats.  I would grow them in the greenhouse but in the summer that is left open, so perhaps they are something to be admired at shows and garden centres.

There were plenty of places to stop for a cup of tea, but these next photographs are for a very special tea party:

Tea for two?  Or two hundred? 

Milk in first?  

My kind of cupcake

A Jammy Dodger the size of a table?  Plenty to share

After tea, how about some interesting vegetables - a basket of dark, nearly black, peas.  They looked lovely:

In the not so dim and distant past, I did an intensive garden design course.  I have always enjoyed gardening and did the RHS Certificate and Diploma courses at Merrist Wood.  Not much success with the exams, I didn't take them all and trying to fit the course and the exams in and around a full-time job proved tricky but I learnt so much about horticulture.  It seemed a natural progression to do a garden design course, and it was brilliant.  The highlight was a trip to the garden of John Brookes, and we were lucky enough to meet him.  He wasn't at Chelsea but my other favourite designer, Dan Pearson, was and it was great to see him back at Chelsea.  Having now seen my two garden design idols 'in the the flesh' is rather special.

I have been watching the Chelsea programmes on the television trying to see if my friend and I were in any of the shots - how vain is that!  We arrived just after 10.00 am and were 'thrown out' when they closed at 8.00 pm and we felt we had not seen everything that was in the show - never mind there's always next year.

Have a great gardening weekend everyone.

Jill