The Chelsea Flower Show promises to be even more spectacular than ever this year, thanks to many must-see exhibits, including some new additions for 2018.
Bringing together garden designers, florists, nursery owners and celebrity garden enthusiasts from across the UK, the show attracts some 157,000 visitors each year to the grounds of the Royal Hospital in Chelsea - its home since 1913.
Exhibits for 2018
As the highlight of the Royal Horticultural Society's annual calendar, the show has a new category this year: Space to Grow. The garden designs will offer take-home ideas aimed at helping us to make the most of our available outdoor space, no matter how limited it may be.
There will be eight Space to Grow gardens lining Royal Hospital Way, with the focus on creating designs that are achievable in a domestic garden, even when space is a challenge.
The Royal Horticultural Society has designated an extra 400 square metres of display space to ensure the new category can convey a positive message about how everyone should grow plants in their garden.
The ten main show gardens lining Main Avenue will include everything from traditional to contemporary design. Show sponsor M&G Investment's Mediterranean-themed garden is created by former gold award winner Sarah Price, who will demonstrate how to incorporate simple, sustainable materials into garden design.
Chelsea at twilight
Thanks to an extension to the opening times on Friday 25th May, the show welcomes a new feature this year. The Chelsea Late Event, otherwise known as Chelsea at twilight, should be a spectacular climax to the events of the penultimate day.
The evening event in Ranelagh Gardens will ensure more people have the chance to visit the show and will feature live bands, artists and an artisan food market, while viewing the exhibits by twilight.
Described as an extravaganza of horticulture and entertainment, the Chelsea Late Event will invite visitors to taste a new cocktail, The Chelsea Late, specially created by mixologists from Warner Edwards. You can enjoy the tasty cuisine of the food market to a music accompaniment provided by London's famous Ronnie Scott's jazz club.
One of the more unusual events is a workshop hosted by the London Vegetable Orchestra, where visitors can find out how to turn their everyday veg, such as carrots and courgettes, into musical instruments!
Sustainable gardens
The emphasis is on sustainability at this year's show, with eight Artisan gardens on Serpentine Walk and Ranelagh Gardens featuring a selection of gardens where designers have been challenged to create an artistic design using natural, sustainable materials.
One of the most unusual eco-friendly exhibits will be the Pearlfisher Garden, showing the beauty of our oceans and reminding people how they must recycle to avoid our planet drowning in a sea of waste. A series of underwater aquatic tanks will create a beautiful sea world, including a 3D-printed sculpture of a pearl diver made from recycled PLA plastic.
The statue will be surrounded by plants such as cactus, exotics and succulents, with live fish swimming around to remind visitors the ocean is their garden and that toxins pose a threat to their existence. The Pearlfisher Garden is designed by past gold and silver medal winner, John Warland, Pearlfisher creative partner, Karen Welman, and famous underwater sculptor, Jason de Caires Taylor.
The Chelsea Flower Show is no stranger to using plastic for its exhibits - in 2010, a major talking point was the use of plastic grass in one of the exhibition gardens. The artificial turf caused quite a few raised eyebrows among traditionalists.
Recycling ideas
This year's dominant theme of sustainability and recycling makes visitors think about what they can do to help the planet. In fact, there are plenty of recycling ideas that can be beneficial to your garden, such as using plastic bottles to help protect young plants from frost.
Used plastic bottles can be recycled into all sorts of gardening implements - some ideas include:
• Cut the top off a bottle and make a small hole in the bottom to create a deep flower pot in which to plant cuttings
• Cut off the base of larger bottles to create mini-cloches to bring on lettuce plants and protect young melons, courgettes and squash plants in the spring
• Stick a large plastic bottle on top of a post and it creates the head for a scarecrow, so you can hang last year's well-worn clothes from it
• Keep garden twine tidy by turning an empty plastic water bottle into a string holder - paint it a bright colour
• Make insect traps to hang on fruit trees from 1.5-litre bottles half-filled with a bait solution
• Tape together nine 1.5-litre bottles to create a raised bed for vegetable-growing - if you make eight such raised beds and place them together, you have a reasonably-sized bed for use all year round
The gates open at 8am each day for visitors to this year's Chelsea Flower Show. Buy your tickets early - it promises to be a real cracker, with top garden designers bringing trend-setting style and cutting-edge ideas to the forum.
Gardening at home
Aiming to do a spot of gardening at home? Solent Plastics has a wide range of storage products for gardening tools and seeds.
As a responsible business, we fully support recycling - our range of recycling storage and plastic waste bins are suitable for commercial and domestic recycling schemes, while many of our products are made from recycled plastic.
We also supply used plastic boxes, crates and containers, helping the environment and passing on savings to customers.
For further information about any of our products, please do not hesitate to give us a call.
Chelsea Flower Show: Gardeners' Paradise
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