Chelsea Flower Show a Blooming Success

This is the month the bugs begin to bite. So what can gardeners do? In Canada east of Manitoba, the political elite has decreed ‘chemical’ pesticides verboten for home gardeners. Elsewhere, others are becoming increasingly disillusioned with the environmental risks posed by the substances. However, bottled ‘natural’ solutions remain available. Prominent amongst these are insecticidal soap and neem oil. While both are less hazardous to beneficial insects, they may still pose a threat, albeit a reduce one. Applying late in the evening when the good guys are less active can lower this still further. Both will have largely degraded by the following morning.

Denying pests alternate hosts may be an even better answer. Forget about that nonsense proclaiming a weed is only a plant whose virtues remain undiscovered. Aphids, one of the gardener’s most notorious pests, customarily flit between weed hosts and valued plants. Once there, not only do they weaken by sucking sap but add insult to injury by vectoring viruses. Fungal diseases also cross-infect different host plants commencing with – you guessed it – weeds. For the gardener, weeding is similar to worship: both involve kneeling only for the gardener the language is different.

Diversion No. 1

Black thumb? She was so dumb she thought Ivanhoe was a Russian horticultural implement

The ultimate garden gathering, the world-famous Chelsea Flower Show made its annual appearance last month in the grounds of the Chelsea General Hospital in West London. Dating back to 1862, when it was known as the Royal Horticultural Society's Great Spring Show, it was then held at RHS garden in Kensington, moving in 1913 to its present location. Today, it receives over 160,000 visitors each year, including Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and other members of the royal family.

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Highlights of the show are a dozen or more theme gardens designed by some of the leaders in the field. This year’s winner of the covet RHS gold medal was the youngest ever. Twenty-six-year-old Hugo Bugg, who operates his own garden design company in Exeter, Devon, was awarded the medal for his environmentally conscious “Rain Garden” in collaboration with the Royal Bank of Canada. Not only did it demonstrate ways that gardeners can conserve and use rainwater, it also featured a selection of trees, grasses and herbaceous perennials to provide habitat for birds and bugs.

Diversion No. 2

Sixty-nine-year-old Brit Peter Glazebrook has grown yet another enormous veggie. His world-beater cauliflower weighed in at 27.5 kilograms with a spread of almost two metres. It joins his other record potato, parsnip, beetroot and onion he has raised in the past.

Not all the Chelsea Flower Show theme gardens have met with universal approval. One of the most controversial gardens in the show’s history, notes The Sunday Telegraph, was Paul Cooper’s ‘Cool and Sexy’ garden in 1994 which featured a grill which blew jets of air up the skirts of unsuspecting women. And of course the Royal Horticultural Society up to last year banned garden gnomes outright. As crews struggled to complete their displays in the allotted 19 days – they have just five to dismantle them following the show – the mercury soared into the high 20s. Many, perhaps for other reasons, must have admired model Amy Willerton as part of a display, in her bikini and ample hair, standing in a shell to emulate the iconic painting of Venus emerging from the waves. There were more practical of less attractive features. Gardening gurus flourished. Alan Titmarsh brought the unwelcome news that wealthy homeowners no longer want plants and flowers or so he claims. And forget about the so-called “low maintenance gardens.” Give up and play golf was the advice.

Diversion No. 3

The case of the racist banana-bunger has been solved. Spanish police arrested a spectator suspected of throwing a banana at Barcelona’s Brazilian soccer star Dani Alves. His farm worker father Monday may have had a good response. Back home, he is planting banana trees.

New research published in the journal Physica Scripta, has shown that snails lose their ability to find their way back to a garden if thrown more than 20 metres away. Killing the slimy suckers is not really terribly effective say researchers from Queen Mary University of London, U.K. The snails in your garden are part of a larger local population that comes and goes as they please. It would take many months of concerted effort to make a significant impact on this population. Not to admit defeat, scientists marked 416 snails and threw them over a wall 1,385 times during their study. This proved that moved out of the garden by a distance of 20 metres or more, the likelihood of those particular snails finding their way back home into the garden was almost zero. Helpfully, the researchers suggest gardeners could benefit from “a stronger throwing arm or mechanically-assisted lobbing.” Intrigued by the study, Ed Cumming suggested in The Sunday Telegraph of other action against escargot and, yes, that includes eating them ‘with garlic and butter.’ Then you could hold snail races with wagers on the side. Or keep them as pets, suggests Cumming, observing that they are easier and cheaper than fish. Others a trifle more practical include sprinkling them with a pinch of salt, circling plants with copper wire, luring them to their doom in dishes of beer (a ‘sensible use for lager,’ says Cumming), biological control with parasitic nematodes or, of ‘limited effectiveness,’ forming a barrier of sharp grit or broken eggshells.

Diversion No. 4

A fifth of women in Britain would rather go without sex than a nice pot of tea, claims a recent survey. They make an average of 1,825 cups of tea a year. One third of those polled would go without Facebook, and a quarter would forgo alcohol or chocolate – all in favour of a good brew.

If the thought of being hit on the head with a leek appeals, then book a flight to Porto in northern Portugal later this month. Alternatively you might be smacked with garlic flowers or less appealingly by a soft plastic hammer. The Festa de São João, pays tribute to Saint John the Baptist and commences in the afternoon of 23 June and through the night into the early hours of the following morning. The street parties and concerts, wine drinking, dancing, barbecues, and fireworks are all said to have their roots in pagan courtship rituals when presumably, leeks and garlic were preferred to hammers, plastic or otherwise.