‘Bowel Research’ garden is what’s wrong with show

The Chelsea Garden Show, held in London every May, is a high point in the gardening season observed around the world. In the U.S., obsessed gardeners watch twice daily BBC television shows that analyze every bit of the fancy show gardens. Gardeners aspire to attend the show as a feather in their gardening cap.

From what I’ve been told, the reality of attending the show rarely lives up to the expectation, as massive crowds leave most people standing on their tiptoes to get a peek at the large show gardens.

But you can get a pretty good idea of the overall picture from photos and videos, and I’m left feeling a bit lackluster about the whole show. For the last several years, the show gardens have all looked more or less the same.

Naturalistic gardens are all the rage, and I’m a fan of them, but some of the show designs seem to have veered into a haphazard planting style, which is astonishing given the level of planning and detail that goes into these gardens.

Even worse is the continued lack of color that is seen in the gardens. There is more to life than white flowers, and even the reserved Brits must crave something other than white.

One of the more colorful gardens (which would still be considered restrained compared to many U.S. gardens) — the Olivia Hill Garden — won both the People’s Choice and the RHS Children’s Choice awards, which suggests I’m not the only one who is sick of the same old, same old.

Chelsea show gardens are often, by necessity, quite contrived, particularly when they need to express the mission of sponsors who put up great sums of money to pay for their creation.

Imagine being the designer charged with created the “Bowel Research UK Microbiome Garden.” Its designers won a gold medal for their efforts in using, “Thoughtful edible plantings that offer a probiotic feast that nourishes the human microbiome,” according to the Royal Horticultural Society description.

It’s enough to make us regular gardeners happy that we don’t have to worry about creating a garden to please a sponsor.

We can create incongruous plant combinations wherever we like, something I did plenty of last weekend in my last push to get everything out of pots and into the ground. If you want color, there’s no limit to how much you can mix in to a garden.

And best of all, we don’t need to worry about anyone’s opinion, or agenda, other than our own.

I miss the days when Chelsea garden designers had unique perspectives that set them apart from the crowd. In fact, some of the elements of my garden were directly inspired by show gardens from a decade ago.

I wouldn’t mind going to the Chelsea Garden Show some time, if only to experience being among so many people excited enough about gardening to get dressed up in flowery outfits and brave the crowds.

I’d happily enjoy a Pimm’s Cup cocktail while I was there, which I suspect would do more to inspire concern for my microbiome than any “gut health” garden could.