Another take on Chelsea: Thinkingardens

For a more iconoclastic take on the Chelsea Flower Show, I recommend you go to the Thinkingardens website. Stephen Anderton, Anne Wareham, and Corrine Julius (l to r) comment on their picks of the show, and offer insightful commentary on the gardens. Their "Best in Show" is not the judges' pick. You will also find a Thinkingardens link to a Royal Horticultural Society video of the three discussing the gardens, along with written commentary. Explore the RHS site for other information such as plant lists for many of the gardens. Just don't try to play any of the BBC videos; they don't work if you live outside the UK.

Germaine Greer also has an article on the 2007 Chelsea Flower Show posted on Thinkingardens. The Chelsea gardens are really exhibits, show gardens put together from plants grown for the most part, in highly artificial environments. They are in no respect real gardens, and Ms. Greer has had it with the artificiality of it all.

Thinkingardens is a website devoted to those who care about gardening and garden design as a serious endeavor - a concern rarely voiced in the U.S. and, from what I read there, not in the UK either.

(Photo: Charles Hawes from Thinkingardens website)