Blaze of Colour

So next week sees the famous Chelsea Flower Show get under way once more, billed as the world’s most prestigious flower show which leads the way in innovative garden design. And a feast of floral delight and colour.

Yet while it is the one major flower show I have not had the privilege of visiting, when you have a blaze of colour like this practically on your doorstep I wonder if I will gain anymore satisfaction from the displays as to what I can readily visit here. This is a splash of colour from the famous Hillier Arboretum in Hampshire which you’ll see readily as you approach the gardens.

True, there is a certain mystique about the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show which has been held in the grounds of the Royal Hospital at Chelsea, every year since 1913, apart from gaps during the two World Wars. Nor is it any longer recognised as Britain's largest flower show having been overtaken by the RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show which I have visited, but it is still the most prestigious.

As a young reporter on a local paper I spent my summers visiting and reporting on village flower shows. Each was magnificent in its way, but nothing held the magical power of this.