They came with their bags and boxes, wagons and wheelies,
all prepared to haul home the perfect plant, piece of statuary or garden
accessory. This was the Harrogate Autumn Flower Show, three days in September
in the North of England where gardeners have the final opportunity to satiate
their garden needs before the season ends. Whether it’s the latest pruning
tool, antique planter or the rarest of shrubs, it’s all available — in spades
(groan). There was even a plant and product crèche for the temporary deposit of
heavy purchases rather than lugging them around the show.
Unlike the well-known city garden shows of summer — Chelsea
and Hampton Court — with their elaborate, hugely expensive show gardens; this
was brass tacks, no guff gardening. I was there to see it all on a perfect
sunny day in the greenest of rolling countryside in Yorkshire. With a brass
band playing and my favourite traditional food available, I was at home. Okay, I’m
a tad biased having grown up there and I was lucky it wasn’t raining, but I
thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
Besides the essential shopping aspect of the show, it is the
place to view displays of: the longest carrots, beets the size of cabbages,
cabbages the size of pumpkins, and every possible variety of perfect apples.
As for the flowers, I gaped at absolutely immaculate
specimens of delightful dahlias, mini mums and monster mums, the finest of
fuchsias, and don’t even ask about the roses. Glads and bonsai, geraniums and delphiniums, all were challenging for best in class, the result of months
of intensive care by amateur gardeners in countless tiny backyards and
allotments (community gardens).
Plants for sale were in abundance, and at the right time for
planting in the garden. I saw a few that I would have liked to bring home, but
alas, customs restrictions are still in place for the importing of plants.
Instead I settled for a selfie with a new coreopsis, one that I’ll be on the
lookout for over here.
Fascinating were the novel approaches to garden adornments —
a life-size shire horse constructed with strips of branches shorn of bark —
imagine that galloping across the rose garden. Increasingly popular are vintage
stone troughs, originally hand hewn with hammer and chisel. My dad had a
collection filled with alpine plants.
Once used to capture water or as troughs for animal feed on
hill farms where stone was abundant, the old ones are rare and much sought
after, but now they can be reproduced by mechanical means. Since the stone is
the same, it’s hard to see any difference between those and the traditional
ones. Galvanised planters appear popular too, just as they are around my place.
One dealer appeared to have rounded up every possible metal artifact that could
possibly hold soil, the original function of some hard to discern.
There is much tradition around gardening in Britain; though
one that is fading is the use of peat in the garden. The government proposes to
ban the use of peat based products by 2020 as harvesting it is considered
environmentally unsustainable. The Royal Horticultural Society has already
reduced the use of peat in its own gardens by 90%.
There are alternatives and I spotted a couple of peat free
potting soils — one produced from composted wool and the other from composted
bracken. The latter is produced in the Lake District and aptly named Lakeland
Gold. Of note is they were both labelled as compost, the term used in Britain
for potting soil, not to be confused with compost produced by a compost pile.
This short glimpse into to the heart of British gardening
was delightful, but now it’s time to sort out my own garden. It doesn’t handle
neglect well at all.
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