RHS Tatton Show 2023

I can’t believe it’s been over a week since I went to the RHS Tatton Show but time is hurtling past and here we are!

**I need to let you know that at the bottom of this page are photos of a very large caterpillar and a moth, just in case you don’t like to see them.**

For those of you who don’t live in the UK, the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) is the UK’s leading gardening charity, inspiring and encouraging people to grow plants of all kinds either in their own spaces or in communities.  They have five gardens of their own which anyone can visit (although there is an entrance fee if you’re not a member) and I’ve written about two of them which I’ve visited – RHS Harlow Carr in Yorkshire with my friend Lucy of Attic24 and more regularly, RHS Bridgewater which is near to Manchester and much more local to me.

The RHS also hold 7 flower shows during the year, the most famous of which is the Chelsea Flower Show, and the closest to me is at Tatton Park, and that’s the one I’ve been to most often.  It consists of show gardens of various sizes; beautiful gardens that look like they have always been in the spaces allocated in the showground but which have been built specially for the 5 days of the shows, and they’re created by garden designers working with plant nurseries and sometimes sponsored by companies or charities.  They’re always something to see and definitely an inspiration for any gardener!

Here are a few of this year’s show gardens:

Alongside the stand-alone gardens, there are many exhibitors there offering plants for sale, garden furniture, garden architecture (oh, I was so tempted by the driftwood horse sculpture until I saw the £3,000 price tag!), ornaments, equipment – it’s really quite hard not to get carried away and want to buy it all!

Most of the plant exhibitors have small gardens next to their stands to show how the plants they are selling will work together in a garden setting …

I couldn’t resist those last two photos – I’m a bit of a sucker for houseleek (Sempervivum) plants and there were some wonderful displays of them.  I managed to resist buying alll the plants, but I did come home with a Dierama or Angel’s fishing rod plant to replace the one that I had that died over the winter a few years ago.

I spent a happy few hours just wandering around and having a good look at everything – and taking LOTS of photos!  A germ of an idea was brewing in my mind and I wanted to be sure that I had all the garden inspiration I thought I might need to make it happen.

At last, I’d seen all that I wanted to see and it was time to join the queue of cars to get out of Tatton Park.  Tatton is famous for its herd of red deer and I’d been surprised that I hadn’t seen them when I drove into the park – and this is why!  They were all congregating at the exit!  Don’t worry, my car was stationary when I took this photo as I was waiting my turn to move forward, and no cars had moved as there was a bit of an altercation between deer and nobody wanted to get their car in the way!

I couldn’t believe it when this one walked right in front of my car – I don’t think I’ve ever been this close to a red deer!

And then, the deer got even closer!  Well, that absolutely made my day!

Back home, I didn’t have much time to think about my garden idea as my cousin and her family arrived from Canada and then not so small daughter was on the plane to Japan – thank you so much for all your good wishes, she was so pleased to know that you were thinking about her.  I’ll write more about her trip soon and I’ll see if I can get her to write a post for me when she gets home too, as I expect she’ll have plenty to say!

After a few days where I didn’t do very much at all other than rest, I was ready to get out into my own garden.  I’m tired of looking out of my kitchen window on my veg boxes which haven’t grown much other than poppies and evening primrose for a couple of years.

I’m tired of feeling guilty that I’ve missed the window for sowing seeds or planting something or harvesting something else, and now that the raised beds have reached the point of needing mending or replacing, I’ve decided to turn the whole space into a flower border with some veg growing in there as well, instead of a veg garden that’s a complete mess with flowers growing where they’re not really supposed to.

It’s been quite an emotional decision as my veg garden is very much connected with my thoughts and memories of my Dad and I did worry that I would be letting him down in some way, but I think he would be happier that I grew what makes me happy and didn’t try to battle on with something that doesn’t work for us at the moment.  I can always go back to growing veg later if I want to.

We watched a film a short while ago with Julie Roberts and George Clooney in it and one of the themes was “why save the good stuff till later?”, and I’ve felt very much like that with the veg garden of late.  For me right now, the flowers are “the good stuff” and I don’t want to wait any longer to grow them.

I made a start yesterday and I’ve cleared the plants and weeds out that I don’t want any more, and that feels really good.

I found this elephant hawk moth caterpillar working its way along the edge of one of the veg boxes – it really is huge, it made me jump!

I had to look it up, I’ve never seen on of these before and the moth that it grows into is beautiful – I’m hoping that more of these will want to live in my new flower garden!

https://blogs.reading.ac.uk/whiteknightsbiodiversity/campus-species-lists/animals/insecta-insects/lepidoptera-moths/moth-gallery/

I’m still going to grow some veg in this garden – I’ve got plants for climbing frames for peas and beans, and I expect that I’ll be digging up potatoes for some time to come as they seem to be pretty good at growing from the tiny seed potatoes that I miss when I dig the plants up!  We’ve got one last dinner’s worth, and my Dad would certainly be pleased with that.