RHS Flower Show, at Tatton

The 2009 Tatton Flower Show is going on right now and yesterday Mum and I went for the day. Mum did amazingly, she walked for ages and seemed really well. She says she feels ok today too, so I'm really happy about that. As usual there were lots of great displays to see. Some of my favourites are always in the flower bed competition. These are msotly produced by public bodies, advertising their locality and the skills of their gardeners all at once. These beds usually have a story attached and show lovely pictures and objects made of flowers. This first one is in honour of honey and the honey bee and was produced by Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council (that's not the beer Newcastle - we have two)!

So here's the bee in close-up. Some cheating here clearly as those wings aren't made of flowers - lol. In the background here you can also see the story board describing the display, so that's where I got my info from, for this blog :-)

The next one here is about a faithful hound called Gelert who belonged to mediaeval Welsh Prince, Llewellyn the great. A truly sad story of a heroic hound. But - nice plant-building here! Possibly my favourite depiction this year was from Sheffield council, the traditional home of Britain's steel industry (and site of the film, the "Full Monty"). The bed shows a steel worker and a pan of smelt being poured, look at those flames!I didn't manage to get the story of this bed, with a hand-print clearly showing, but again, fine use of plants here.The Peter Pan bed was produced by Dumfried and Galloway council, as apparently that is where J.M.Barrie grew up.

This bed records an event that happened when the Liverpool to Manchester railway was first opened, and shows Stephenson's Rocket.

The beds were awarded prizes, according to how good a panel of judges considered them to be - but I don't appear to have any record of those, so you can tell how impressive I thought the judging was! Here's an award certificate on one of the displays inside the big marquee, where I didn't take a lot of pictures this year. Lovely begonias, however :-)

In a smaller marquee there was a fruit and vegetable competition that reminded me of something from 4H, though this was adults offerings :-) In view of my new "farming" habits, I was keen to see the displays. Probably the most appestising were these cherries. Yum!

I did think some of our produce from the allotment could have been entered, I'm sure our redcurrents and broad beans are just as lovely ... maybe next year! Meanwhile, I did like these gooseberries. I was interested in the Tayberries (longer than rasbperries) as something else we might plant next year. These are labelled "josta" and I was very excited by them as they look like some unidetified "too big to be blackcurrents" at the allotment. Ha! I said. However, when I got back up to the plot last night I took some pictures there which show that they are not quite like these. So, the detective work continues. (I'll post allotment pics over the weekend, hopefully).
Back outside again and there was filming going on for the BBC show "Gardeners' World". From left to right here we have the presenters, Toby Buckland, Carol Klein and Joe Swift, being filmed talking about the show (standing in one of the show gardens).

There was a lot of stop-start with the filming and at one point Carol seemed quite fed up. The crowd consensus was that she must have fluffed her lines!Finally, this was probably my favourite of the show gardens this year. The shape and colour of those walls and the use of plants along them - not something I can imagine achieving in real life, but pretty.

The garden is called "Strictly Come Dancing" and features a sculpture on that point. To y'all that would read "Dancing with the Stars" lol.OK more plot news soon and meanwhile, lots of love, K xxx.