Hampton Court Flower Show part 3

 RHS Hampton Court part 1

 RHS Hampton Court images

 If you want to know what plants were used in The Ecover Garden, here is a full list. After we visited the Ecover Garden we moved on to look at the Ecover Bee and some of the Ecover planters

This is "The Bee" an amazing sculpture made from recycled materials and Ecover plastic bottles. It was really quite spectacular!

 

 

 Ecover sponsored 16 planters which have been designed by eight gardening celebrities.

 This is Adam Frost's "Bee friendly planter" which was smothered in bees and other insects, so it obviously worked!

Lots of watering was going on, even at one o'clock - I think a lot of plants would have just died in the heat without a lot of " topping up" of watering during the day. 

Maria and I spent four hours at RHS Hampton Court and it was very hot indeed on Monday ( and has continued so all this week)  and I must admit after a couple of hours looking around and walking around we got to the point where we were hiding in every available patch of shade and drinking lots of water.

We took some food with us but also purchased a sandwich - and this was a pleasant surprise because the food outlets were "RHS" branded and all were the same price and not very expensive, for what they were. I bought a rather nice tomato and herb bread roll with salad and lemon mayo roll for me and a roasted veg and mozzarella version for Maria. We sat by the very large water feature, in the shade of a rather fine tree and ate our packed lunch. Fortunately we had both brought lots of water with us - and we needed it as it got hotter and hotter during the afternoon.

We carried on looking around and discussing what we thought the judges would make of the gardens, and after lunch we began to see award signs popping up on the gardens. Maria and I were spot on with our awards for virtually every garden <smug grin>

 

Best Summer Garden was A Cool Garden, I tried to get a decent photo but the camera boom was always in the way!

This is A Room with a View which won Gold - here is Monty Don getting ready to film a piece to camera for one of the THREE (!) Gardeners World specials which were on BBC TV this week.

 This is Spirits of the Land, designed by Mariko Naka, which I thought was simply beautiful. It won Silver ( I thought it should have been Gold, personally)

 

Apart from The Ecover Garden, my favourite was Athanasia, designed by Weald Design, which won Gold in the Show Garden category. This was billed as " ... a place for reflection, rest and a celebration of the beauty of nature. It is a serene garden that offers a moment of tranquillity, as well as hope for the future."
 

 I loved the wooden block seating and the planting was ( yet again) in the "cottage style" which I love. The fact there were lots of geraniums on display probably helps my view.

"Ashes to Ashes" a bit strange looking but the dark coloured planting looked spectacular in the sunshine - this also won Gold.

 We also looked at the Flyte of Fancy chicken house decoration competition

I liked this one best decorated by Philippa Forrester

I also really loved this beautiful Buff Orpington cockerel



By about 3.30 Maria and I had had enough - we were just too hot and tired and sun baked to stay any longer and also aware that we still had a more than four hour journey home. So we headed for the exit, pausing only to take a closer look at the very first garden we saw on our way into the Show.

Desolation to Regeneration  the very first garden we saw when we arrived, also won Gold and Best Conceptual Garden.

I really liked this, the nearest end of this garden had accompanying sounds of a forest fire and the most amazing planting of "hot" coloured plants,  then as you walk through the garden you come across charred sculptures and a lot of very new, green planting conveying what one might see after a forest fire. It was stunning.


So, we trekked across the burning desert for hours and hours walked back on the wide path in the blazing sunshine past Hampton Court Palace to the railway station and caught the train to Waterloo, then the Tube to Paddington and managed to catch the 1722 train home. I got back in to Compost Mansions at 8.30 and had a cool shower!

A fabulous day, thank you so much to Ecover UK for the tickets and thanks to all the fabulous designers and gardeners who made it all happen.

I have not discussed all that we saw yet, and there was so much more we did not see but I hope you have got a flavour of the event.  If you want to see the complete list of all the gardens you can find them on the RHS website here