On a wall in our office, in a certain little room, we lovingly display some of our proudest achievements – our Chelsea Flower Show awards. We have shown at Chelsea for 19 years, and we look at our 18 awards with pride (we didn’t get one one year, but we don’t talk about that). However, as we enter 2021, we can’t help but look at the vacant space where the 2020 award might have been. 2020 had a lot happen, but it also had a lot that didn’t, and within the gardening community, one was not so sorely missed as the cancellation of Chelsea.
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show has been not just a staple, but a figure head in horticulture for over 100 years: trend-setting, career-making (career-breaking!) and influencing how the tended green space of our country, and the even the world, looks like. To show at Chelsea is to take part in an event of immense importance but also of community. And it was within this community that you could almost hear an audible sob when the news last March that Chelsea 2020 was not going ahead was announced. Gardens and stands that had been months, if not years, in the making, suddenly put back into storage. Plants and flowers that had been tended to with the kind of care that a new parent dotes on their newborn, suddenly halted in its tracks (not so simple as to put these in storage as well). You would have been forgiven for thinking that this kind of upset would have made the participants of Chelsea angry, but much like the resilience of nature herself, this was not the case: we took stock, we adapted, and we evolved (for those who did not know the show went online instead). It is with this same determination and love of what we all do that has seen the recent news of this years show now happening in autumn to not be a disappointment, but rather an opportunity (this article was literally in the writing process when this news was announced).
Never before in its 108 year history has Chelsea ever been held in the autumn (not surprising given its original name was The Great Spring Show). It is most definitely going to be tricky, even nigh on impossible for some, but it also is going to open up opportunities and spark creativity. Who knows, perhaps a show demonstrating the beauties that autumn has will inspire a new trend in gardening?
And so it is that upon reflection we decided perhaps we won’t look at the vacant 2020 award space with sadness, but rather with pride: pride that even when worldwide disasters threaten the very normality of life as we know it, the gardening community carries on. As Audrey Hepburn once said, “To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow”, even if that means that tomorrow isn’t quite the exact date you had in mind.
P.s.We still haven’t changed our mind on the other missing award though, that one can just be forgotten about…