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Saturday 22 November 2008

Traditional virtues

Ursula Buchan wanders through the Gardens

Among the selfless and accomplished volunteers, none was more interesting to listen to than Margaret Owen, an octogenarian plantswoman in a purple hat from Shropshire, who staged an impressive stand of camassias and dictamnus, for her county branch of the National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens. She has bred pink, plum and amethyst colour forms of Camassia leichtlinii, a genus formerly thought only to produce blue or white flowers.

Finest of all, however, was the Alpine Garden Society exhibit, staged under the direction of Kit Grey-Wilson, showing alpines growing in a variety of garden situations. These plants are grown by AGS members and there were drifts of rare rhodohypoxis as well as the heartachingly lovely, pinkish-white, drooping bells of Lilium mackliniae, a lily discovered by Frank Kingdon-Ward in 1946 in Manipur, north-east India. This stand won both a Gold medal and the President’s Award for best exhibit in the Great Pavilion — which just goes to show that amateur doesn’t necessarily mean amateur at Chelsea.

Even among many of the professionals, however, traditions were respected. Carpet bedding, a horticultural jeu d’esprit developed in the 19th century and rarely practised anywhere now, provided the base of a witty exhibit staged by Cardiff County Council to underline the Welsh capital’s claims to pre-eminence as a sporting venue. There was a gigantic footballer clothed in Echeveria and Alternanthera, but I particularly enjoyed the cricket wicket with silver-leaved artemisia forming the crease. It may have been ridiculous but it has done its job: I, for one, will not now forget that Cardiff hosts an Ashes Test Match for the first time next year.

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