Solitary chicken - need advice

[soapdragon]

Has anyone else been watching the BBC coverage? I have dipped into the evening one each day at 8.00pm but have missed dear Alan Titchmarsh! Monty Don has been wonderful and has a different approach but it feels like Alan was such a feature of the whole thing that its just not the same without him.

 

I loved the L'Occitane garden and all the other plantings with purples, whites and pink which seemed predominant this year. The French orchid grower's stand in the marquee looked amazing..apparently the company have been going for 130 years!

 

Any thoughts anyone? Have any of you been able to go and, if so, what did you think...it looked very crowded!?

 

The closest I have been is out in the garden this week doing the 'Chelsea chop'!

 

 

 

 

 

I think lots of those gardens need chickens

[Willow]

I'm watching the BBC coverage on I player.some of the coverage is a bit frustrating as it's very superficial and sections get repeated.

 

My OH commented that one of the gardens needed ducks

 

I loved most of the gardens this year, especially Cleve Wests and the Chelsea hospital one with the beautiful lawn. Not keen on the Russian garden or Rosy Hardys both had too much circular metal. Thought Rosys looked like it had hub caps lying around.

 

I would love to go but it falls in exam time and I have one more year of a teen taking exams

[Daphne]

I have a love/hate relationship with it. Part of me hates the money involved and the falsity of it yet at the same time I love some of the results I also prefer less presenters and more lingering shots of plants. I've also caught a bit of the daytime shows, and am hugely annoyed that they have repeated large sections on the evening programme. Lazy and cheap.

 

As I am in Portugal I am surrounded by a very different natural landscape and a different selection of plants in gardens. It is actually very hard to buy garden plants where we are so its difficult to create a garden from scratch, and right now ours is full of wild flowers, plus productive trees and some established shrubs. There is no design to speak of. I am having to think very differently and am still at the start of the process. I have also found that I just don't recognise some plants - I have no idea if they are supposed to be indoors or outside

 

Anyway, I also loved the garden with the lawn (probably because they don't exist here!), and I also thought metal discs looked like hubcaps, added to which I grew up with chalk streams and I found that garden was about as far from my idea of a chalk stream inspired garden that it is possible to get!

 

I love seeing the plants in the pavilion, and I found the piece on hepaticas really quite moving - an inspiring and dedicated gentleman

[Olly]

I've watched a bit of it, and I too miss Alan Tichmarsh. I'm not keen on Chelsea as a whole, it's more art than gardening in my opinion. I went once a few years ago and was very disappointed - horribly crowded and you can only see the gardens from one side and at a distance, you actually see much more on TV.

[Willow]

I love the growers that are passionate about particular plants and he was delightful, I was happy to watch repeat footage of him getting emotional about his medal but agree was a bit bored with the repeated segments, particularly watching on iplayer as generally couldn't' remember what episode I'd got to and wasn't always easy to tell if I'd watched an episode before. I don't remember that being as obvious previous years.

 

I still miss Geoff Hamilton, since then I've dipped in and out of gardeners world but always watched Geoff, his sense of enjoyment was infectious