(Image credit: Getty Images)
By
Toby Keel
published
- Pimms on tap – with a queue by 11am
- A tea stall where you can enjoy a cuppa from genuine Wedgewood china
- A Solar System made from chrysanthemums – complete with a rotating Planet Earth
- Inspirational quotes from Vita Sackville-West and Gertude Jekyll emblazoned across the site as if they’re mantras from the Dalai Lama
- Dorian from Birds of a Feather, Christopher Biggins and Peggy from Hi-de-Hi – it’s a C-list party dream.
(Image credit: WireImage)
- An actress sitting all day on a bench, musing gently about art, nature and man
- Hand-made wooden rocking chairs – for the garden
- Daffodils in summer
- A garden designed in the form of a miniature London square
The New West End Garden at the 2018 RHS Chelsea Flower Show at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, London. (
(Image credit: Toby Keel/Country Life))
- A security guard saying into his walkie talkie ‘Okay Dave, the champagne lorry’s coming through now’
- People dressed for a night at the opera at half-past nine in the morning
World-Champion Free-diver Tanya Streeter poses at The Pearlfisher Garden while wearing a dress designed by BA Fashion and Textiles students from The University of Brighton during the Chelsea Flower Show 2018 (Picture: Getty)
- Gold leaf gardening gloves
- Rhythmic gymnasts in gold spandex outfits jumping up and down between flowers, shrubs and garden sculptures
- “Is this Yorkshire? No, it can’t be. It must be South Africa.”
- A pair of 20ft-high horses made from driftwood
(Image credit: Toby Keel)
- Flesh-eating plants presented as lovingly as the most beautiful, fragrant bloom
- A Windrush garden co-sponsored by Baroness Floella Benjamin of Playschool fame
https://youtu.be/ETq-hednlBY?t=5s
- A genuine stone-built Pennine cottage in a the middle of a city (at SW3 prices, it’d probably cost a couple of million)
The Welcome to Yorkshire garden at the 2018 RHS Chelsea Flower Show at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, London. (
(Image credit: Toby Keel))
- Rob Brydon, Esther Rantzen, Nick Frost…
- A dinner party setting outdoors, complete with kitchen
The Urban Flow Garden at the 2018 RHS Chelsea Flower Show at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, London. (
(Image credit: Toby Keel/Country Life))
- Gourmet cheese toasties
- An enormous blue head made from glass
(Image credit: Toby Keel / CL)
- A truly beautiful painting of the Khayelitsha shanty town near Cape Town
- The biggest set of cricket stumps we’ve ever seen
Giant cricket stumps at the British Council Garden – India: A Billion Dreams at the RHS 2018 Chelsea Flower Show (
(Image credit: Toby Keel/Country Life))
- More Panama hats than you’d see in the members’ enclosure at Lord’s… and the shop where they must sell them. It’s Panama hat ground zero
- A metal bench in the shape of a rabbit and a Chesterfield sofa made from metal
- Ainsley Harriott, that girl from the One Show, the bloke from DIY SOS…
- The best treehouse we’ve ever seen – complete with slide! (And yes, we did try it out…)
(Image credit: Toby Keel / Country Life)
- A garden sponsored by a group of PPI-chasers called The Claim Guys
- A rainbow of lupins
(Image credit: Toby Keel/Country Life)
- Countless things so enormously heavy that you wonder how on earth they made it here in the first place
(Image credit: Toby Keel / CL)
- A garden pod representing an NHS clinic
- A dozen thrones made from flowers
(Image credit: Flower thrones at the 2018 RHS Chelsea Flower Show (Toby Keel/Country Life))
- The very best bits of the National Dahlia Collection
- A wickerwork dolphin leaping out of the ‘sea’ next to a transatlantic ship
Chelsea Flower Show 2018 - The Windrush Garden, marks the 70th anniversary of the HMT Empire Windrush bringing immigrants from the Caribbean to Britain, created with Birmingham City Council's gardens team
- James Martin, Bill Turnbull, Kirstie Allsopp…
- Salt and pepper grinders made in the shape of chess pieces
(Image credit: Toby Keel/CL)
The Welcome to Yorkshire garden at the 2018 RHS Chelsea Flower Show at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, London. (Pic: Toby Keel)
(Image credit: Toby Keel/Country Life)
All the 2018 Chelsea Flower Show medal winners
The RHS has announced the gold medallists for the 2018 Chelsea Flower Show.
A Kent garden designed by Jo Thompson.
(Image credit: Jo Thompson / Rachel Warne)
The best garden designers and landscapers in Britain
A beautiful country house is as much about its surroundings as its bricks and mortar, something that the best garden
-
From California to Cornwall: How surfing became a cornerstone of Cornish cultureA new exhibition at Cornwall's National Maritime Museum celebrates a century of surf culture and reveals how the country became a global leader in surf innovation and conservation.
-
18 magnificent homes for sale from £550k to £20 million, as seen in Country LifeFrom a charming thatched cottage to a 300-acre estate with its own vineyard, here's our pick of places to come to the market via Country Life of late.
