Chelsea Flowers

The Chelsea Flower Show is held every year for five days in May ...

in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea, a retirement home for British soldiers ...

These are the Chelsea Pensioners, in dashing scarlet coats and tricorne hats ...

... some, like the old gent below, impressively bemedalled ...

On Friday I joined a crowd of thousands thronging their way down these tree-lined avenues ...

all suitably dressed for a typical British early summer's day!

The show gets a limited capacity of (advance-booking-only) 157 000 people every year. On Friday I wondered if they'd all somehow been booked for the same day.  Talk about crowds - it was elbows-out and umbrellas en-garde ...

Some came dressed with a due sense of occasion ...

That's the spirit! 
These bags were a sort of uniform, for show guides and purchases ...

The Great Pavilion is the main destination, where exhibitors vie for medals. Here there were massed displays of single flowers ...

exotic orchid water-gardens

succulents ...

(this one especially for you, Nicola!)


Themed displays ...

Waitrose and the NFU's (the British farmers' union) stand, 'Championing British', mixed plants and produce

Country exhibits ...

(and this one's for you, mother!)

Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens (South Africa) wins gold medals with regular monotony for their amazing displays against giant photographic backdrops, above and below.

Hello, is that King Kong skulking behind the agapanthus? - 

Birmingham City Council's display 'plight of the gorillas' highlighted endangered Rwandan gorillas


Even Helen Mirren was there!

Helen looks thrilled with having a new variety of a carniverous pitcher plant named after her


The country display that really blew me away was 'Fantastic Thailand' ...

It was impossible to do justice with my camera to the size of this massive display because of the crowds jostling around it ... these are just some details, above and below. Everything is constructed from millions of tiny flowers, banana leaf and bamboo. A smiling Thai lady told me it took 60 people 3 months to put together before it was transported in pieces to London ...

There was even floral fashion - Charlotte Murrant used exotic flowers to create a range of wonderful jackets ...

In the vast open-air space around the Great Pavilion were more exhibits and landscaped gardens than you could hope to cover in one day, and garden accessories to suit every imaginable taste. You could go whimsical with an Alice in Wonderland theme ...

maybe teamed with these fantastical garden tool sculptures I really fancied ...

though if you happen to own a stately home, a life-size stag or a shield-bearing gryphon could be just the ticket ...

perhaps a giant escargot or a tree-height bandaged running man? ...

No, I think my favourite is this mad dinosaur-riding top-hatted naked lady ...

No-one does elegant conservatories and garden gazebos quite as well as the English ...

though I also love their country cottage garden look - ramshackle huts, untamed flowers and the quintessentially English potting shed ...

In similar vein, and in the spirit of the royal wedding, was this vintage Morris Minor with retro accessories and a copy of the Aston Martin licence plate  made by Prince Harry for the newly-weds ...

A highlight of this year's show was Diarmuid Gavin's Irish Sky Garden. Suspended from this giant crane ...

you could be lifted up above the trees in a hanging sky garden for an aerial view of the show and London ...

No, I did not join the long queue for a swing in the sky ... I was all flowered out by now. Time to leave, and although rickshaws were doing brisk business between the show and the tube station, I joined the legions of those on foot, many carrying their purchases ...

some carrying only the accessories of a well-heeled Chelsea gent - rolled-up newspaper, trilby and umbrella ...

maybe pausing for a pit-stop at a pub ...?

on the way back to Sloane Square, all leafy green ...

where the shop windows were fully into the spirit of the flower show and I spotted this cute little grass-covered Smart car ...

Now I know just what to wear for next year, and how to arrive in style ...

Hey Mr Tambourine Man

In the week of his 70th birthday ...


The voice was nasal and reedy, alongside the raspy harmonica. But it was never about the voice; he was a poet and he helped define a generation.

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows ... In the back of a blood-spattered police van in Cape Town in the midst of the 1976 riots we sang Blowin' in the Wind and The Times They Are A-Changing to keep our spirits up - young and scared, his words gave us the confidence to believe a change of the ancien regime was possible. 

Thanks, Bob, and happy birthday.

Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind


Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves


The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach


Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow


Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free


Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands


With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves


Let me forget about today until tomorrow

Cape winelands: Europe meets Africa

Stellenbosch, just under an hour's drive from Cape Town, is a pretty, oak-tree lined university town surrounded by wine farms. Whenever work used to take me there, I'd leave early in the morning to avoid traffic on the national road, and I'd be driving through vineyards at sunrise, to have early coffee in Dorp Street (below), where the houses and shops go back to the 1700s. 

The legacy of the Europeans in Africa is here - the Dutch, whose governor founded this town in 1679 ... 

and the French, who settled in nearby Franschhoek below...

The French Huguenots, hot-footing it to Africa away from persecution in 1600s France, found compensation here after they crossed the mountains, above, into this lush valley that was perfect for planting vines and practising the art of wine-making - something they knew plenty about. 

They named their new farms after the areas in France they came from and the vineyards they'd left behind ... La Motte, Cabriere, Provence, Chamonix, Dieu Donné, La Dauphine and many more still exist today in this part of the Cape winelands.

They called the area Le Coin Francais, their little French corner of Southern Africa (later translated by the Dutch to Franschhoek).

The 'Cape Dutch' style of their gabled houses (shades of old Amsterdam) is actually a mix of Dutch, French, German and Indonesian styles unique to this part of the world. They were built by slaves imported from the east who were skilled craftsmen, from local materials - clay, sea-shells, wild reed, slate from Robben Island ...

Some had the vision to plant vines high up on the mountain slopes. Delaire is the 'vineyard in the sky' at the top of Helshoogte mountain pass (meaning hell's height, or a hell of a height) with these spectacular views of the Banhoek valley, framed by mountain ranges ...

You used to be able to have a relaxed picnic under the trees here while enjoying the views, but no more. In a contemporary version of European colonisation, Delaire has been bought by self-made (Stepney to Bond Street) billionaire jeweller, Laurence Graff and had a multi-million make-over. Rustic Cape Dutch has disappeared and in its place is a contemporary fusion of African and ... I'm not sure, really, but it makes a statement of its own even if accessible mainly to the very rich ...

Graff has gathered works of art by contemporary South African artists, including sculptor Dylan Lewis (his fabulous big cats are against the mountain backdrop in a photo above).

What would the Huguenots make of all this?