per l'edizione del 2012 viene presentato un insolito Lupino dell'America centrale: il lupino delle Ande con fiori un azzurro intenso.Esso costituisce un importante alimento per le popolazioni andine.
I semi si possono acquistare tramite il link sul Guardian. Su questo quotidiano si può seguire quasi in diretta il Flower Show.
The people behind the Chelsea flower show
As the gardening world readies itself for the Chelsea flower show 2012, we meet some of the people (and a dog) who will bring it to life
Email
Chelsea Flower Show: The Bloms planted 16,000 tulip bulbs last autumn. Photographs: Joss McKinley
Tulip tenders
When Chris and Elaine Blom see hail begin to fall in their garden, it isn't the washing on the line they rush to save – it is their tulips. On these flowers rest their hopes of adding another Chelsea Flower Show gold to their firm Bloms Bulbs' haul of 61 medals. Tonight, a team of 30 will work through until morning to perfect their display stand in the Great Pavilion, placing thousands of blooms in vases of all sizes: it isn't unusual for two hours' work to be thrown out because it isn't quite up to Chris's exacting requirements. The Bloms' labours began in the autumn, when they planted 16,000 bulbs on a cold, windy hill at their nursery in Melchbourne, Bedfordshire. Trying to protect the tulips from weather that can wreck the blooms is a full-time job: high winds, hail, too much sun, too little sun, snow… Day and night, they reposition the glass panes and windows of their greenhouse to keep conditions just right.
The trick is to coax around 200 early-, mid- and late-flowering varieties – which naturally flower at intervals through March to May – to be in tiptop condition for the show. This year, they started picking tulips on 23 March. Each bunch was wrapped in paper and transferred to huge walk-in coolers kept at 0.5C. Now, the coolers are stacked to the ceiling with boxes of flowers, all of which need to be meticulously unwrapped and checked every day. Only when they are so limp and faded that, to the untrained eye, they look fit for the compost heap are they put in a bucket of water for a carefully timed eight hours. This is just enough to bring them back to their plump former selves, without bringing them on so much that they "blow" – in other words, reach their peak too early.
Even then, there is no way of knowing how they will fare once they are brought back to life. "You are never entirely sure until they come out of the chillers and are up on the show stand," Chris says.
Rare plant growers
A dining room in Windsor doesn't sound the ideal starting point for a plant destined for a Chelsea show garden. But the Andean lupin(Lupinus mutabilis) isn't an ordinary plant. During a field trip to Bolivia to seek inspiration for World Vision's show garden, designers John Warland and Sim Flemons came across a field of stunning, blue-flowered lupins: when they found out that the seeds of this plant were a highly valued food source in South America, they asked Peter and Susann Laughton of plantify.co.uk to grow some for Chelsea. Easier said than done: the plant is little known in the UK, so no one was offering the seeds for sale. Following a lengthy hunt online, however, and after seeking advice from the ethnobotanist James Wong, the Laughtons ended up testing their rudimentary Spanish to the limit by buying the seeds in a South American food shop in London. They're taking an enormous risk in trying to coax the lupins to germinate, grow and flower early (they'd naturally flower in June and July) in time for the show – especially when nobody in the UK had a clue how to raise them. This mission has taken over their house and their lives, with hundreds of seedlings raised under grow lights in both their dining room and greenhouse under different conditions to find what will bring on early blooms. "We are crossing our fingers and toes it works," Susann says. The couple will be on hand during the buildup to the show to select the best lupins for planting the garden, and to groom each one individually. But what if they don't manage to get the lupin to flower in time? "You have a beautiful foliage plant!" Peter says.
The kennel model
If Emma Dewhurst sounds nervous, it's because she has a lot on her mind. Her corgi – named Kincroft Invercawdor, or Cawdie for short – is to be the star resident of a specially designed kennel in the Caravan Club's show garden. Will he trash the garden? Wee on the plants? Or, worse, drop a turd as the press cameras click?
Dewhurst is handling the PR for the garden, so when designer Jo Thompson suggested Cawdie could take up temporary residence in the garden, Dewhurst could hardly say no. She will be completing the patriotic feel by appearing alongside her dog in a red, white and blue 70s maxi dress. "Because he's a corgi and it's a show that the Queen traditionally visits, and it's the jubilee year, it seemed that he was the right dog to be there," she says. (Dog breed purists will note that Cawdie's a Cardigan corgi, while the Queen keeps Pembrokes, but that would be splitting hairs.)
Dewhurst is confident that Cawdie's laid-back personality will stop him from getting into too much trouble. "There's none of the nip talked about with corgis – he will be very relaxed and calm, and he won't go for anyone." Dewhurst will drive Cawdie from her home near Kendal in Cumbria to London tomorrow, ahead of his big day on Monday, Chelsea press day. Aside from his habit of howling at ambulance sirens, Dewhurst is wondering how she can entice the corgi into the kennel, a handmade affair boasting a green roof that channels rainwater into a dog bowl below. Her breeder recommended training using liver and garlic treats. On the other hand, perhaps it would be less risky for Cawdie to go on display with an empty stomach. As Dewhurst says, "A very practical farmer said to me this morning, 'You'd better starve him, hadn't you?'"
• Visit guardian.co.uk/gardens for full coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show, starting this monday.
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento