A day at the RHS Malvern Show 2023 and why you should visit next year

 It's that time of year when I feel rather giddy. After the long dark days of winter, and let's face it, quite a miserable spring so far, May and the months ahead are full of promise, opportunities, and excitement as the annual round of major garden fairs, festivals and open gardens begin. Each event has its own charm, depending on what time of the year it is held and where.

Going to my first show of the season last week was an absolute delight. There’s something about RHS Malvern Spring Festival that gladdens my heart.

Firstly, the setting is sublime, with the glorious Malvern Hills providing a stunning backdrop and the sheer size of the immaculate Three Counties Showground means there is plenty of space to wander around and more importantly with lots of seating to relax.

The Floral Marquee has a dominating position near the entrance, and you can see visitors debating whether to go in there first to see the 50 nurseries which are exhibiting in the 190 metre long marquee or plough on ahead to see the show gardens.

As it was early morning I marched resolutely onwards before the crowds came, to get a good look at the five show gardens as well as the feature gardens.

It was easy to see why the Bee Positive, Bee Kind , Bee Aware garden was awarded a gold medal by the judges.

Designed by Rock Ford and Katie Gentle for global charity, Bees for Development, the beehives take centre stage, as all around the planting is designed to attract and feed bees with vegetables, herbs and perennial flowers. I particularly liked the living roof of the kitchen,and the area below. In fact, I wanted to leap over the ropes and settle there for an hour, listening to the bees and admiring the layout of the garden. So many good ideas to take home here... 

The Greener Gloucestershire NHS Garden designed by Laura Ashton Phillips is also full of plants to attract wildlife but has been created as a calming environment for patients at the Gloucester Royal Hospital. A well deserved Silver Medal for Laura ….

The pretty, soothing palette of colours and a running stream appeal to the senses, there are wide pathways so the garden is completely accessible. It's an inviting space to connect with nature after being in the sterile world of a hospital, something which has been proven to lower stress levels and improve patient recovery rates.

Meanwhile, Jamie Langlands stole the show with his design for The Wildlife Trusts' "Wilder Spaces Garden” 

It features a pond, a creek, native wildflowers and a wide variety of habitats for wildlife and encouraging diversity. Mind you, it's also an inspiring and restful garden for humans...and this human loved it.

So did the judges here at RHS Malvern.  They awarded this garden a Gold Medal,, Best in  Show and the Best Construction for a garden .

I was there when the judges came over and presented Jamie and his team with the awards. After the smiles for the photographers, the guys had the longest of group hugs and the biggest grins on their faces.

Speaking briefly with Jamie afterwards, he couldn't contain his delight. "It's amazing. This is the type of garden that's more me, and I'm thrilled for my contractors who worked so hard in quite tough conditions. It's great that they have been given this award." 

A large, 25 metre dome which dominated the Show Gardens area was certainly a talking point. Going inside Leaf Tropicana was quite a revelation, leaving an oh so quintessentially English country festival and finding yourself in a tropical wonderland of heat, humidity and lush greenery.

The vision, the scale of the planting (3,000 plants), the height of the trees and being confronted by a huge waterfall  are breathtakingly successful. There's even a little bar to sit at and have a drink.

Chatting with designer Peter Dowle, who runs Leaf Creative, a plant nursery and garden design service in Gloucestershire,  I was surprised how relaxed he was after a build which took 14 men 12 days to construct.“So what happens to all these plants after the show” I asked Peter. Apparently every plant is recycled. Many are hired out for events and he pointed out one huge plant which has been on display 5 times at different events. 

So, these were the four gardens I very much enjoyed t, but every single garden here had  something to admire or an idea to squirrel away for future use.

Of course it's not just the gardens that visitors come to see at RHS Malvern. This year there seemed to be an increasing amount of talks and demonstrations by top florists,  garden experts and designers, cooks plus familiar faces from the telly, such as James Alexander Sinclair, Frances Tophill, Alan Titchmarsh, Adam Frost,,Mark Diacono, Greg Wallace et al.

It's lovely to take a pause for half an hour and listen to knowledgeable and amiable speakers, and they were very popular with visitors.

The retail offer at this spring festival is top notch too. Everything from clothes to garden antiques, thousands of plants in perfect condition, garden seating  parasols, plant pots , tools etc which you never knew you never needed were tempting so many. Artisan and local food and drinks  producers were selling well too indoors and with something new to taste or take home. 

As Thursday drew to a close, it was time to go and at last visit the Floral Marquee on the way out. With the crowds thinning out, there was space to see everything that the plant nurseries had to offer and time to talk to experts in their field of speciality. As suspected, I couldn't resist the lure of seeing plants at their peak and a tray of carnations and three stunning pots of tulips soon found themselves in the boot of my car.

As I made my way home happily, I realised two things: what an entertaining and motivational day it had been, and also that RHS Malvern has become my favourite festival.

RHS Malvern is being held next year from 9 - 12 May 2024.

A day at RHS Malvern Spring Festival

It was a very early start on Thursday - I was off to Worcestershire for the RHS Malvern Spring Festival. As I sped down the M6 and M5, the sun was shining, I was singing along to songs on the radio, and there was that delightful sensation of anticipation.

What gardens would I fall in love with? Which plants would knock my socks off?  And what would my overall impression of the festival be?

The Malvern Hills are a wonderful setting, and it's such a spacious and well laid out festival .Wide paths too and flat grass.....bliss, as it was my first week of walking without crutches after fracturing my ankle.

First stop was a meet up with other members of the Garden Media Guild just inside the Floral Marquee  in the Plant Finder Parlour. Just past ten o clock  in the morning and quite a few were standing happily chatting with a glass of ice cold prosecco in their hands. How wonderful I thought, so promptly took a glass and joined them.

It was good to catch up with a rather formidable looking Matthew Biggs again .

He was dressed for his role as plant hunter Ernest Wilson who brought such an eclectic collection of beautiful and rare specimens back to the UK at the beginning of the twentieth century. I knew of how he'd found the ghost tree or handkerchief tree, ...see here
http://thinkingofthedays.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/days-in-limelight.html

but Matthew really brought his work to life in a dynamic and humorous way which the audience loved. Unfortunately though, I didn't have time to watch his interpretation of the life of George Forrest in the afternoon.

I loved Jekka McVicar's garden at last year's Chelsea Flower Show so was rather keen to see the Health and Wellbeing Garden she's designed which will be a permanent feature at the Three Counties Showground.

A circular garden protected by a dry stone wall, there was lots to look at. I always love lavender edging and there's so many herbs planted here in the raised beds by Woodblocx, I lost count.  Tashkent mint is a new one to me which I liked. But this isn't just a calming garden for reflection, it's a working one too ..as a learning space for Pathways, a day service working with adults with learning disabilities

I made my way to the Grow Zone where gardening charities and organisations were showcasing their edible beds. I  was keen to see Sara Venn and her team from Incredible Edible Bristol. They've created 35 food community gardens in the last three years. It's a wonderful achievement -  Sarah is so passionate about her project, she's a real dynamo.

 But this venture isn't just about plants, it's about people too. Luke, one of the volunteers , was telling me how he joined within a few hours of coming to live in Bristol. He's found a great bunch of friends who share his love of gardening and he's an enthusiastic advocate  for what they're trying to achieve.

The raised bed from  Rush Farm Biodynamic in Worcestershire was a picture of vitality and health. Sebastian Parsons who farms there and who is Chief Exec of the Biodynamic Land Trust was just as perky as his plants, eagerly explaining how he and his sisters have transformed Rush Farm.



 

 

Hotfooting it back to the Floral Marquee, before it got too hot, there was almost sensory overload from the sight and scents of so many plants and people. So much to admire, but if I had to choose three plants which I coveted...two of them were paeonies from Primrose Hall...the beautiful "Sarah Bernhardt" 

 

And the elegant "Mothers Choice"

 









 







And thirdly , this pretty as a picture Phlox...."Clouds of Perfume" from Hardy's Plants.

Wandering outside, the first show garden I looked around was this...The "At one with ...a meditation garden from Howle Hill Nursery. With Japanese maples, three springs, statement pieces and a cooling pool harmonising so well, I'm not surprised that this garden won best in show. There was such a sense of timelessness and serenity here...



 

But it was the Villaggio Verde garden "The Retreat "that I wanted to sit in. A hot saltwater spa, the clean lines of the terrace, the large olive trees, leading into a Mediterranean  planting of olives and lavender, were so evocative, so delicious, I could have set up camp there with a picnic of prosecco, olives and nuts.







Itching as I am to be near the coast at this time of year, I liked the vibrancy of "The Ocean "spa garden designed by Michel Damien



There was a queue to walk around the Buckfast Abbey Millennium Garden. This detail intrigued me as I waited but time was pressing, I became aware of everything I hadn't yet seen....so I moved on....

 

 

 

 

Other visitors however were relaxing and tucking into street food and picnics by the bandstand....

That's something I like about Malvern...plenty of benches and places to sit down and take the weight of your feet, and just watch the world go by.

Joe Swift found the perfect place to sit a while, but he wasn't relaxing , he had some pieces to camera  to do for Gardeners World.

As for the shopping at Malvern.....there's so much to tempt you into spending far more than you should. Plants, clothes, paintings, food, and of course the bigger items too. Now my old ash tree no longer stands centre stage in my garden due to Storm Doris, there's no shade.  I was very impressed with these huge parasols from Instashade which use Australian fabrics which know how to withstand the searing sun . One day, one of these shall be mine!

So, a rather successful festival ......and I 'm looking forward to the RHS Malvern Autumn Show, which takes place on the 23rd to 24th September.
See you there....