For those that know me and my complete and utter rock and roll lifestyle, they know that after hypnosis and running, my other propensity for geekiness, and my other passion and love is gardening. I have been developing a traditional, old fashioned English cottage garden at our home throughout recent years and you regular readers will have seen me punctuating my usual blog entries about hypnosis and running with the odd set of photos from my garden.

Today is one of those days when I simply share some photos on the blog.

Yesterday, Katie and I went to the Chelsea Flower Show and not only was it thriving and pulsing with gardening enthusiasts, the sun shone brightly, music played, and I got to indulge myself in some of my favourite sights… I think I was in the minority with my fashion sense, rather than the stripey blazer and panama hat, I opted for Abercrombie top and mesh-backed truckers cap, I like to buck convention.

My love for all things cottage garden means that I get incredibly excited when presented with delphiniums that are this tall. I have grown many delphiniums from seed, but mine are wider and not as tall as these. The who grew these told me that he trims the lower off-shoots so all the growing gets focused onwards and upwards and I may have a go at that with some of my own next year….

Similarly, I go giddy when looking at the varieties of foxgloves all growing proudly together.

I have some rare perennial bright yellow digitalis in my garden that I grew from seed and cannot wait to grow this tall as we get into summer now, here are some more foxgloves…

I am in love with lupins and have many of them in various parts of my garden, just look at these amazing specimens on display here:

it was probably the little boy in me coming out, but I marvelled at the big and slightly sinister look of the carnivorous plants on display here, nature is stunning and incredible at times:

And I was sure to keep my fingers away from this gang of Venus Fly Traps:

With the show gardens, the one everyone was talking about was Diarmuid’s seven floor garden that might be cool if you were one of the Chelsea Pensioners allowed up there, but us mere members of the public were only allowed to see the ground floor and had to read the handout to discover the joys of the upper levels which included bathing areas, viewing galleries, vegetable plots, and entertaining zones. Here is as good a picture I could get:

My favourite show garden was the William Wordsworth inspired one (although the Corsican garden was magnificent too, and smelled very distinct and lovely), but the stone well and wild cottage garden flowers did it for me and I can imagine Wordsworth at his most inspired surrounded by such:

There was so much more and I took a LOT more photos… The backdrop of the beautiful Royal Horticultural buildings is grand and impressive and there was so much to see. These were my highlights though, and I have been inspired to make plans for my many of the areas of my own garden now, I think Katie tired of me saying “I need more of those __________ in the ___________ part of the garden to make it more ________”

With the sun shining so gloriously, there could not have been a better time to be inspired in that way.

I’ll be back in the middle of next week after my trip to Edinburgh to run their marathon; have a thoroughly enjoyable weekend.