A very special Chelsea coming up!

Yes! It’s time to find our tickets, dust off the Panama hats and squeeze into the outfits that have mysteriously shrunk in the wardrobe – Chelsea Flower Show is just around the corner!

This year we’ll also be celebrating the 10^th anniversary of the3Growbags’ blog, so there’ll be plenty of reminiscing about the first show we all went to together.

But the main priority is: What will be the ‘stand-out’ aspects of Chelsea in 2026. Recent years have focused a lot on climate change and wildlife, is it time for robot gardeners? Or gardening in space? Nothing would surprise us!

The excitement is mounting about what Chelsea Flower Show will present this year!  From what I can see so far, there is to be a big emphasis of education.  The Eden Project – Bring Me Sunshine garden, for instance, is all about empowering young adults with practical skills giving them pathways into various jobs in horticulture.  The literature says that the Chelsea garden ‘is inspired by Morecambe Bay where a new Eden is being created’.  I think we know what they’re getting at, but on paper the aspirations seem quite high, don’t they!

The Children’s Society Garden is based on the idea of helping young people too – offering teenagers a place of sanctuary and reflection. Could be handy as well, of course, for the rest of the family trying to manage their teenager…… 😳 I do like the fact that teenagers were instrumental in the design of the garden, though. We oldies MUST encourage the young about horticulture, ecology and environment when we can, or we are done for.

Beyond those very worthy causes among the show gardens, the Great Pavilion is always such a phantasmagoria of delights – I will be making my annual pilgrimages to my favourite stands. The Hertfordshire-based Daisy Roots Nursery is a must, and rather wonderfully, they are celebrating their TENTH anniversary of coming to Chelsea – just like the3Growbags! All the rose stands will be demanding attention, and the wonderful clematis ones too, including Raymond Evison Clematis which is launching three new beauts this year – ‘Eliza’, ‘Queen’s Nurse’ (in association with the National Garden Scheme), and ‘Ithemba’. They look so tempting.  In fact I’m not sure that there is a clematis yet developed that I can resist.

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Yes, as ever your intrepid threesome will be reporting back from the front line to tell you all about what Chelsea Flower Show is really like this year; battling crowds, fighting for a square inch of picnic space and craning our necks for a glimpse of the Show Gardens – so you don’t have to!

Elaine will be swooning over the latest David Austin introduction, Rosa ‘Sir David Beckham’ apparently – (words that I never thought I would be putting together if I’m honest) and Caroline will be hoping that there will be free samples at the Fettercairn Whisky Distillery garden ….

But as ever I am most looking forward to discovering plants that are rare and intriguing. So I will be like a pig in clover with such an extensive presence from Plant Heritage this year. Not only will they have the ‘Missing Collector Garden’ outdoors, but also a ‘Plant Heritage Zone’ in the Pavilion. Each will contain specimens from National Collections of genera such as Geum, Thalictrum, Verbascum, scent-leaf geraniums, and most exciting of all ….Wisteria .
I simply can’t wait!.

And that’s the wonderful thing about our shared hobby, the anticipation of being enraptured by new and beautiful plants and being able to share this joy with so many of you, our loyal gardening community is a wonderful added bonus that we three have been so lucky to have experienced over these 10 years

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Laura is right, I’ll be making a beeline for Fettercairn Distillery (I lived there for a while although not actually in the distillery – well not often). Whatever they claim to be their provenance, believe me, it’s more spectacular.

In my opinion one of the key topics this year is going to be concrete – or rather no concrete. 

I’m not sure how many of us actually use much concrete in our gardens but apparently if you’re a garden designer you use tonnes of it, and it’s a ‘bad thing’. So in its place this year the maestros are using variously oyster shell mush (Addleshaw Goddard: Flourish in the City garden) or a cockle + mussel shell concoction (the Eden Project: Bring Me Sunshine).  

Without being pedantic, neither sounds sustainably scaleable. It would have been much more cost-effective to have used my cheese scones, if only they’d asked….

But if the rights and wrongs of a bag of Blue Circle sounds a bit prosaic to you, fear not. This year sees the appearance of a ‘pleasure garden’ brought to you by LoveHoney. They are described as ‘sexual wellbeing’ experts, but a quick check of their website (take your teddy with you) triggers a definite mind-boggle about the possible content of their Chelsea exhibit.

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Of course one of our many Chelsea toasts will be for our 10th anniversary and to you – our generous and supportive partners over the last decade.

Sharing our weekly posts with you has been such chaotic fun. Over the years we’ve added Louise Sims’ wonderful monographs on individual plants, fortnightly gardening tips, YouTube videos, Chelsea Flower Show reports, competitions, an online shop ….. if you knew the bonkers to-ing and fro-ing that goes on before each Saturday email is issued, you’d be astounded that we ever get it out, as it were.

Hopefully by next year we’ll be inviting Monty Don onto our own prime-time gardening chat show plus managing the chaotic queue at our latest book-signing after, oh go on then, winning Chelsea Gold for the show garden we designed ourselves.

Well, gardeners are naturally optimistic aren’t they? 

So on we go – a bit rickety and forgetful but in the hands of capable friends (you) we sally forth on the next decade with a gardener’s confidence that everything is going to come up nice!

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This lovely shrub makes a fantastic focal point and is a perfect way to mark an anniversary celebration, which is exactly why Louise has chosen it as her Great Plant this Month!

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Here’s a curiosity: our VERY FIRST BLOG published back in May 2016……we’d appreciate it if you didn’t comment on how many more wrinkles we have got now…

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You could be going to Gardeners’ World Live for free this year! Yes we’ve got a pair of tickets to give away for this show on 21 June, worth over £60! Just answer one simple question and they could be yours! You can enter here.

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 💚 The costs of keeping our site working and safe are going up. We want to go on sharing everything for free without adverts, but if you enjoy our weekly posts, the price of a cup of coffee would be extremely helpful in paying the bills! Thank you 💚

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More NB If you’re not already a subscriber and you’d like a bit more gardening chitchat from the3growbags, please type your email address here and we’ll send you a new post every Saturday morning.

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