Monthly Musing – May 2025 – Carefully curated
This time last weekend, I was at the Chelsea Flower Show in London. It was a wonderful opportunity to catch up with one of my best friends and as we both did our horticultural qualifications together, there was no shortage of chat about and admiration of the plants and flowers on display along with everything else!
To my surprise (probably because it had been widely-hyped and I know this can lead to heightened expectation and sometimes disappointment), my favourite garden was the dog garden designed by Monty Don. Oh, I absolutely fell in love with all the details – and you probably won’t be surprised to hear that I have come home with lots of ideas to redesign our garden to incorporate some of them.
The point of the dog garden was to break a few Chelsea “rules” and with its trampled lawn and abandoned dog toys, this was not an immaculate show piece as the other gardens were. I thoroughly enjoyed our stroll round all the show gardens – you can’t go into them, but you can admire from behind a barrier and talk to people involved in creating them about the plants and their ideas. The gardens are carefully curated to look their absolute best for the few days of the show and there are bees and pollinating insects a-plenty buzzing around the blooms – some of which wouldn’t be flowering in my garden for another few weeks but there they all together to create a picture-perfect view.
We talk about social media images being carefully curated for an audience and it’s easy to think that this is something new, but I’ve been going to garden shows for years and this is how they work. You only get to see the best bits – flowers that bloom to complement each other even if it’s not necessarily “quite” their time to bloom, specially chosen garden features, perfectly manicured grass … no brown dog patches on the turf, no wayward nettles or brambles which definitely weren’t there when you looked at the border the day before, nothing that refused to flower even though you’ve done everything you know that the plant should like. Flower show gardens, just like social media photos, are a snapshot of something to aspire to – but they’re not real life.
Our dog would have loved to dip his toes in the little stream in the dog garden – but he’d have probably laid waste to some of the others, barging straight through the borders or digging something up that smelled interesting. That’s real life, isn’t it? The irony of this is not lost on me as I take photos for the blog of my own borders to show off the best flowers and not the dustbins or the compost bag that I have forgotten to move, or the plants that refused to flower even though I’ve done everything I know that the plant should like … Carefully curated is nothing new and I don’t think it’s necessarily anything bad either, we just have to remember that much of what we are shown at any time is carefully curated in one way or another.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of worrying you never see the real side of life with anything, but it has to be about balance, I think. Looking at the flowers to frame my photo makes me stop to take note of what’s there and looks lovely and not focus on the parts that still need work. Flower show gardens show us what’s possible and for those who love gardening and flowers, bring a sense of calm and renewed enthusiasm for getting back out there to do something new. Social media photos inspire new ideas by showing us images that we might never see otherwise, and as long as we remember not use them as something to beat ourselves up with because we might not already have that, they also serve their aspirational purpose.
Now, I’m just going to go and move that compost bag that’s spoiling the view, I have some photos to take …
Carefully curated … not a dustbin in sight!
Your garden always looks beautiful – but you are so right everything we see on Social Media is carefully curated to show off the best bits. No wonder some people have so much anxiety thinking that this is real life and they have to match up to it somehow.
I am so glad you liked Monty Don’s garden for dogs – we didn’t go to Chelsea this year – but all the hype about that garden had certainly put me off. Nice to know it was really good.
Have a lovely weekend.
Oh Flowers, beautiful blooms.
I hope we had our last frost (though it was 39 F last night). I’ve planted most of my flowers in the raised beds. One more trip to a nursery will do it though there is always temptation. But, we won’t even think about the yard with reminders of the two dogs!
We visited the Chelsea Garden Show from Canada in 2019. I was strolling along enjoying the beautiful gardens when I saw Monty Don! My husband and I were thrilled because we’d watched all his garden shows that were available on our TVO (like PBS) here in Ontario. Of course, being polite Canadians, we didn’t chase after him. Our garden has always been a home for various dogs over the years. Some of them have rearranged our plantings or turned our green grass rather yellow but all of them loved the garden. I read that the Dog Garden is being reconstructed at Battersea for the rescue dogs. It would be interesting to see how it holds up.
For me Monty garden was my favourite. As you say the perfection goes that bit to far for me. I have a large garden which I love it is my sanctuary. But it is my personal stamp on the environment. My plants, birds, insects and all wild life that visit is very welcome, Hedgehogs, moles, Deer. Perfection is way over rated. Have a lovely week Christine.