Chelsea Flower Show 2025 Update
December 23rd 2024
Getting ready for Chelsea 2025 has been a huge focus for the nursery during the last four months. We are involved in ten gardens across three different categories, encompassing a huge range of different plants.
Each plant species has its own challenge associated with it, and must be at their peak for judging at the show. That’s a lot of work for our brilliant nursery team, who have over 25,000 Chelsea plants to nurture!
Most plants have now been potted, and are sitting nice and snug in our polytunnels, apart from some key species that are braving the winter cold in our most exposed area of the nursery.
Jess has potted around 11,500 plants so far
Plants in this category include Meconopsis (Himalayan Poppy), Erythronium, and Polygonatum (soloman seal) which need to be grown as cold as possible, otherwise they will flower too early.
Meconopsis exposed to the cold weather
Other plants which flower naturally in June or even July need to be grown warm, and in some cases put under stress with low nutrient compost while being kept on the the dry side. This induces the plant into survival mode and prompts it to flower much earlier than it would normally do.
Chick Peas grown in prop where its warm
Some plants are to be placed in drystone walls, this means we grow them laid on their sides so that the leaves are facing the right way. It’s a simple fix, but a pain in the backside!, as every pot needs to be stood upright to water and then laid down again afterwards!
Asplenium are excellent crack fillers for walls
The general principle of gardening is to work with nature, growing plants that suit the soil, location and aspect of your garden, so that plants flower or fruit when they naturally should.
Growing plants for Chelsea is completely unnatural, with all the normal principles of good gardening thrown out of the window!
Ceanothus will be trained down in January
Plants are made to perform on demand for the third week of May, using whatever manipulation of nutrition, water, heat, cold, light, dark we can do… it’s a bit crazy really!
Look out for our next update soon.
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Posted by Liam Murphy
23rd December 2024
