Strawberry mountain

I loved Chelsea Flower Show last year so was keen to go along when the Bermuda Department of Tourism invited me. Last year, most of my favourite gardens were big show gardens outdoors, but this year I made more time for the exhibitors inside the floral marquee, and found lots of interesting smaller gardens. Here’s the 10 I liked best overall this year (in no particular order):

1. The tunnel of clematis of all different shades of purple and white, created by Raymond Evison and his Guernsey Clematis team

2. A huge mountain covered in nothing but strawberries that gave off the most delicious smell – but had a strict no-picking policy

3. An intricate display of flowers tucked into every crevice of an old, gnarled tree, making it look a bit like a maypole

Tree decked in flowers

4. The Bermuda garden, which was styled around a giant stone shaped like a polo – the ‘moonstone’ which Bermudians have in their gardens to bring good luck, and often used in wedding ceremonies

5. The Tourism Malaysia garden, again created by TV-gardener James Wong, but this year inspired by the pool-gardens of urban houses in Malaysia. Malaysia deservedly took home a gold award again this year

6. The incredible jockey’s jackets crafted out of flowers by entrants in the RHS Young Chelsea Florist of the Year competition

7. The Principality of Monaco’s chic, architecture-led garden with swimming pool and decking. As I left the show at 8pm I was mesmerised by the robot pool cleaner

Jockey's jackets

8. Sri Lanka’s beautiful orchid garden. Sri Lanka also pulled off a rather impressive list of celebrity drop-ins: Bill Bailey, JLS, Rick Stein, Jane Asher and Helen Mirren

9. The exciting B&Q garden with real goldfish and a striking vertical garden, promoting  techniques for maximising urban space to grow fresh produce

10. The controversial Failte Island ‘sky garden’ (the one that was lifted into the air by a crane every so often). I didn’t get chance to see it aloft but I loved the dense grasses and foliage of the garden, and let’s face it, it would be super-cool to dine in a ‘hanging Eden’.

I was a guest of the Malaysia Tourist Board, which won Gold for its rainforest-inspired garden, designed by James Wong (off the Grow Your Own Drugs programme on TV).

The garden was really beautiful, with square stone slabs like stepping-stones on a shallow lake, and shiny foliage of different greens, shapes and textures.

I heard a few visitors grumble that there weren’t actually any flowers, but I loved it – much more to my taste than rows of rhodedendrons or pots of pansies.

A soundtrack of bird and animal noises played softly in the background and it was so relaxing I almost fell asleep on the Minister of
Tourism.

Dato Sri Dr Ng Yen Yen, the minister, told me all about the flowers in her own garden, and about the government’s plan to create a Malaysian version of the Royal Horticultural Society, to get more Malaysians involved in and excited by gardening.

I also had an interesting chat with James himself, about how gardeners often tend to want to grow species from far-away places, instead of appreciating what grows in their ‘own back yard’.

“When I was growing up in Malaysia, all I wanted to do was grow English roses and a perfect striped lawn,” he says. “They’d struggle against the climate. It’s only recently that Malaysians are realising there are so many things around them that are more beautiful than any rose. I hope we’ve shown that our normal plants can win gold on the world stage.”

This got me thinking about the impact of flying and shipping plants and trees from one side of the world to the other to make our gardens look pretty.  There’s often talk about ‘food miles’ but what about ‘plant miles’?

My other favourite gardens at the show included the Global Stone Bee-Friendly Garden, which had a giant message reminding visitors of Albert Einstein’s prophecy that ‘when the last bee disappears off the face of the earth, man only has four years to live” (see my earlier feature on the decline of the honey bee).

I also loved Bradstone Biodiversity Garden which had insect-friendly flowers and log-piles, and a stone pavilion with crevices for nesting birds and bamboo canes to house insects.

The Eden Project garden was huge, if a little bonkers, with rows of old washing machine doors. It did well in the competition but I wasn’t sure if buying the biggest plot of the Show might have anything to do with it.

I was also fascinated by the Naturally Norway garden which was promoting the use of kebony instead of tropical timber for decking and pavilions. Kebony is made using the byproducts of sugar-cane production to harden sustainable wood species like pine and maple, and it looked stunning.

I wasn’t convinced by the Daily Telegraph garden, which seemed to have gone for the overgrown, disused railway track look. I didn’t find it particularly, beautiful, relaxing or interesting but I must have missed the point as it was the overall winner for 2010. Shows what I know…..

I made a little spread of seeds and over-ripe fruit out on her wall but the birds didn’t exactly flock to it. They need more than 20 minutes notice that the food is out, I imagine.
We were visited by a handful of winged things though – two small brown birds which I identified as wrens, and two which were definitely blackbirds.

A lovely goose flew over too, perhaps from the reservoir in Hackney, but as it didn’t land in the garden I couldn’t count it.
I’m looking forward to hearing the countrywide results in a couple of weeks.
Inspired by the BGBW, I invested in a seed-and-lard feeder which I put out on our balcony last Sunday….it hasn’t had any visitors yet to my knowledge but hopefully word will get out soon. I’m also wondering about investing in a pair of binoculars as it really was a nightmare trying to identify the few birds I did see…

I first got interested in the global honeybee crisis when I was working on a feature for Australia and New Zealand magazine about honey in those two countries (click the thumbnail to read the full article).

Declining populations aren’t just bad news for honey production – the real concern is that without bees, plants and crops are not pollinated. It seems that there are several factors involved, but a parasitic virus is suspected as a major cause. The parasite has now spread to New Zealand but Australia is currently free of it.

In the UK, which also has the virus, the honeybee population has fallen by 10-15% in the last two years.

There seems to be a growing awareness of the problem, and also a growth in people keeping their own bees (check out Urban Bees). And in  April, the the UK government announced some good news – another £8 million for research. Let’s hope it’s not too little too late.

I’m not usually that into gardens (see other blog posts for attempts to cultivate a herb garden on my balcony) but this one was lovely. I surprised myself with how many plants and flowers I could name – I’ve obviously absorbed some horticultural knowledge from my parents by osmosis over the years.

Sadly, an increasing appreciation of horticulture has not been matched by an increased ability to care for stuff. This is the current state of my balcony garden. Dead as a doornail.

Back to Homebase next weekend for me then…..

They have one of the longest life expectancies in the world here – 86 years for women and 77 for men. This is put down to their chilled-out lifestyle and healthy cuisine so I came to Emi’s Place to try some of the Okinawan specialities.

These range from seaweed and aloe vera (bit gross) to pickled cucumber (quite nice) and prawns in dill-tempura (lovely).

Emi showing me around her garden

Emi really puts my home-growing efforts to shame though. At the back of her house she showed us the dragonfruit, papaya, aubergine, dill, and all kinds of other stuff that she grows.

In my defence, the growing conditions in the tropics do lend themselves more to cultivating crops than the weather in north London has done recently, but I must still applaud her efforts.

I do hope my flatmate’s been remembering to water them…..

To give them the best possible start in life, I’ve invested in some plant food for my boys out on the balcony.

They’re not looking too healthy at the moment, to be honest. The basil is faring particularly badly. I haven’t watered them all week so that probably hasn’t helped – the weather’s been a bit rubbish so I’ve not been out on the balcony much.

I did, however, eat one of the peppers in a pasta sauce this week – it tasted pretty nice but was about a quarter of the size of a normal pepper so didn’t go far. Most of the other peppers on the plant have begun to shrivel so I’ve had to chuck them out. I now feel guilty of food wastage, but they were in a fairly advanced stage of rot.

The mint is looking marginally more lively than the basil, but my coriander is starting to turn quite yellow. I’m hoping that the plant food will do the trick but I fear it may be too little too late….

At about two metres square, it’s unlikely I’ll ever grow enough out there to become self-sufficient, but you’ve got to start somewhere.

I had intended to fully research balcony gardening before I went, to find out who likes sharing a pot with who, which plants I should be planting at this time of year, and which plants are most likely to thrive on the 37 minutes of morning sunshine our balcony currently enjoys.

Instead, I rocked up at Homebase with only a very vague idea of what I was going to buy, and quickly fell out with the store assistant: “Look, I just water the plants. I don’t know anything about plants” was the unhelpful response I got when I asked which type of mint she’d recommend.

I ended up struggling home on the bus with: two 70cm plastic planter troughs; a bag of compost; a pot each of mint, basil and coriander; and a ‘Pick-a-Pep’ plant which already has five miniature red peppers growing on it.

Coriander (left) and mint.

I have no doubt that sturdier, healthier, and more ethically-sourced plants are available from other outlets. At Homebase on a sunny Sunday afternoon, it was more a case of trying to find any plant which still had its label on. But now they’re bedded in and watered they’re not looking too ropey, are they?