The pressure was intense. With the SA Gold Coin Exchange as an official sponsor, the subtle association with gold weighed heavily on the minds of this year’s South African Kirstenbosch team to the Chelsea Flower Show this week.
Early on Tuesday morning, the tension broke. David Davidson’s team had indeed pulled off a gold medal performance in one of the shortest planning build-ups to the Chelsea Flower Show yet staged. The South Africans very nearly didn’t get to Chelsea this year, and it was only a last-minute sponsorship from the Western Cape provincial government and the SA Gold Coin Exchange that made it possible.
Although the 157 000 tickets to the show are an annual sell-out by March, the number of exhibits have dropped from 800 to 600 since the financial crisis. This year, Monaco, Malaysia, Barbados and Trinidad, Australia, Japan and South Africa were once again at this London floral Olympics to capture the hearts, minds and holiday spend of thousands of eco-tourists who visit Chelsea each year.
Entitled “Botanical Landscapes”, South Africa’s exhibit featured two World Heritage sites – the Cape Floral Kingdom and the Richtersveld – which are both counted among the 25 biodiversity hot spots worldwide.
Designed by Davidson and Ray Hudson, the exhibit was dominated by a central wall that split the stand and was covered by scenic back-to-back panoramas of Table Mountain and the Richtersveld.
“Beautifully photographed panoramas are really effective,” says Davidson. “A very real photographic image of Table Mountain creates a sense of place, and people who come to see the exhibit leave with the feeling that they have just visited Table Mountain and would like to be there again.”
Against the backdrop of Table Mountain, the team laid out a garden of proteas, restios and fynbos – all picked according to the Cape’s sustainable harvesting code of best practice. Cut flower suppliers Edwin Gouws of Mountain Dew and Dorah Siduka of Fynsa were both on the team this year and delighted in seeing the fruits of their labour impress thousands of people.
Also of special interest to visitors at Chelsea this year were the many red disa orchids, known as the pride of Table Mountain, that were sourced from a disa farm in Franschhoek, packed in bubble wrap and air-freighted to London.
In contrast, the desert of the Richtersveld sector of the exhibit included rare and inaccessible plants that impressed the botanically knowledgeable judges. The focal point of this landscape is an endemic halfmens (Pachypodium namaquanum), on loan from the Karoo National Botanical Garden, which will make the long trip home to Worcester this week. Other spectacular plants included the bastard quiver tree (Aloe pillansii), wild grape (Cyphostemma juttae) and botterboom (Tylecodon paniculata).
Davidson and Hudson have now designed and created 17 of the 36 South African exhibits to have graced the Grand Pavilion at the Chelsea Flower Show. After the impounding of plants at Heathrow airport for 24 hours last year, the team reported no such problems this year. The plants flew out of South Africa on the evening of the municipal elections and freight agents had the plants at the show by the Thursday evening.
This gave the team three full days to condition the plants and build the stand. All exhibits have to be ready for judging from 10am on Monday. However, the arrival of a group of known judges at the South Africa stand two hours before judging started set off alarm bells, until it was established that they wanted to see the fascinating Richtersveld plants in their own private time.
The South African volunteer team to Chelsea was smaller than usual this year. The volunteers – professionals from the green industries – pay their own way to London and help the build-up team as part of a working experience. Their numbers were made up by horticulturists Lufuno Konanani, from the KwaZulu-Natal National Botanical Garden in Pietermaritzburg, and Adam Harrower, from Kirstenbosch.
While Western Cape MEC for Agriculture and Rural Development Gerrit van Rensburg and Alan Demby, chairman of the SA Gold Coin Exchange, accompanied the team to London, members of the team are always keen to see which British celebrities are interested in the exhibit.
Unusually this year, Queen Elizabeth II and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, did not make it to the South African stand.
However, former Beatle and Chelsea regular Ringo Starr and his wife, former Bond girl Barbara Bach, were seen in the Grand Pavilion with actresses Dame Helen Mirren, Gwyneth Paltrow and Vanessa Redgrave.
The Chelsea Flower Show continues to be a showcase for South Africa’s rich biodiversity and each year presents the country as a major tourist destination.
The show ends today and the exhibit will be re-created later in the year for local plant lovers in Joburg, Pietermaritzburg and Cape Town.
*l Next week, Kay Montgomery looks at the latest gardening trends from the Chelsea Flower Show, including Diarmuid Gavin’s “Irish Sky Garden”, complete with a flying pod garden, suspended by a crane, over a large water garden. - Saturday Star