Chelsea Flower Show 2014

The Telegraph Garden

The Chelsea Flower Show is my favourite event of the year, and this year was wonderful. The weather was much kinder than last year - when it was so cold - and the gardens more interesting. I particularly loved The Telegraph garden designed by Tommaso del Buono and Paul Gazerwitz  (above) as well as the 'Best in Show' garden by Luciano Giubbieli for Laurent Perrier (below). 

The Laurent Perrier garden

My favourite Japanese designer Kazayuki Ishihara again excelled himself with a 'Best in Show' artisan garden aptly named 'Paradise', but I am beginning to tire a little of his cushions of moss and relentless traditional imagery and hope that next year he might try something more avant-garde (as his early creations using water on glass, were). 

Ishihara's Paradise on Earth garden

Click here for some more photos from the show

See also:

Chelsea Flower Show 2013

Chelsea Flower Show 2012

Chelsea Flower Show 2011

Chelsea Flower Show 2010
Chelsea Flower Show 2008
Chelsea Flower Show 2007

Drapers' 650th Anniversary Lunch for the Almshouses

The Master, the Admiral Lord Boyce, addressing the residents at the lunch

The Drapers' Company celebrates the 650th Anniversary of the grant of its first charter by Edward III this year (though the Company has existed since the C12th) and as part of the anniversary celebrations, held a lunch for the almost 200 residents of its three almshouses at Queen Elizabeth's College, Greenwich, Walter's Close, Southwark, and Edmanson's Close, Tottenham.

The residents gather in the Court Room before the lunch

The event was also close to the 450th anniversary of the founding of the first Drapers' Almshouses

Favourite Gardens - Bere Mill in Spring

Bere Mill

Bere Mill is a beautiful C18th mill on the Test at Whitchurch where Portals first made bank notes. I visited it last year in early summer and took a number of photos but this year have returned in May, taking photos with different cameras here and here.

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Favourite Places - Wallop Brook

Wallop Brook, Hampshire, on the road between Stockbridge and Salisbury. A classic pastoral scene in late April