This year my friend and internet ad pioneer Stephen Klein did not come to the Chelsea Flower Show. This was a shame not only because I like to spend time with Steve but also because it reduced by 50 percent the number of attendees at the Show’s opening night who actually care about flowers. Fortunately the Queen had a more developed sense of duty.
Last night’s event was quite memorable. It was freezing cold as usual for a late May evening in London but at least it did not rain. The opening night drew the usual mix of bankers lawyers FTSE 100 CEOs and Chairmen to ogle each other while pretending (not too strenuously) to view the flower gardens. From my perspective it was reassuring to see so many Thomson Reuters clients working the crowd seemingly unaware that the UK media had declared that the "End is Near."
Many of the gardens on display really are spectacular labors of love. My favorite which seemed to best capture the zeitgeist of the times was the Asian themed grass-covered rolling dunes complete with an industrial-sized espresso machine. This surely best combined the gardening and banking cultures at work at Chelsea last night.
I think the thing that gets me about the Chelsea Flower show is the way it has been hijacked over the years. So when Arabella Lennox-Boyd designs The Telegraph garden I view it as the Arabella Lennox-Boyd garden not ‘The Telegraph garden’. I might be persuaded that its is the Arabella Lennox-Boyd garden sponsored by ‘The Telegraph’ but it is really quite a travesty to view it the other way around. I suppose that some people might actually be sucked in by this form of truth distortion but it feels to me that these people must be susceptable to the ‘Emporer’s new clothes’ syndrome. Is it the case that without the money that these glory seekers inject Chelsea would descend into obscurity. I think not but perhaps the RHS isn’t prepared to take the risk. I guess that’s the world of media:-)