It would have to be microscopic before I could raise a breath of enthusiasm, tbh, Rouge. A detestable splurge of excess...with only the merest nod to 'horticulture. Sponsored by city financiers, fearing less profits...I think this says it all, really...although last year, it passed me by utterly. With only the tiniest amount of personal censoring, the horrible and tasteless excuse for a celebrity photo-opportunity, remained an irrelevance for this keen gardener.

I went to Chelsea years ago and it was an enjoyable spectacle. I don't remember much about the big display gardens, but was impressed by the smaller displays and exhibits by various growers and sellers.

I suspect the show will still be worth attending (though the high-end ticket prices are alarming).

I'd go too, even with Camp's warning.

Our March flower show, in Toronto, is Canada Blooms. For our own gardening interests it isn't what it was, still that's presumably about changing tastes and hence survival.

Canada Blooms is now "co-located" with the National Home Show to create "North Americas largest home and garden show".

I would agree, however, with one local Toronto newspaper which said it's the "most exciting event of the winter - for Canadian gardeners---".

watch out.. or campy will tell us how she really feels.. lol

ken

Update:

With 'Chelsea' soon to happen I am noticing more and more reports.

For example Chelsea 2017

(Campanula, this one even mentions some about one of your fave plant families, the Umbels).

Ha! Having almost done umbellifers to death...and having handy streamsides, it's all about the ranunculaceae family for me this season. Buttercups, thalictrum, anemones, anemonopsis, species clematis, aconitum, hellebores, trautvetteria, larkspurs, hepaticas, caltha...

It was a toss-up between the 'little frogs' or primula...and after a fairly disastrous germination rate of all the wetland primulas apart from florindae, oxslips and my beloved auriculas, primroses are on the 'back burner'.

Although I do have a couple of new umbels on the go - melanoselinum decipiens, athamanta turbith and molopospermum peloppesiacum (they are all such mouthfulls...and as for spelling!

As a lupine lover, I still had a gasp when I saw this lupine picture . If I had been there, I would be like a tennis match watcher - whipping my eyes back and forth between the lupines and the peonies.

Yep, the nursery displays in the floral marquee are the best bit of Chelsea - the rest is just spectacle (bizarre recreations of some imaginary landscape, tweaked to within an inch of its life).

Thanks, Campanula, it's good to know. I've always dreamed of doing a garden trip to Chelsea, now I know it may not be worth the significant expense.

There are other, less overblown garden shows...but I honestly think these shows are essentially shopping trips while there are gardens aplenty (real gardens, grown over time, involving plants which are not just sourced and placed for a fortnight)...and these are never a waste of money. Whatever Chelsea is about (theatre, carnivale, art, excess, display, extravagance, marketing, fashion). I don't think it is predicated on ' horticulture' and hasn't been for some time...but if you go with an awareness of that, I think you could still have an interesting time. A trip to one of the RHS flagship gardens, while bearing little relation to real-life gardening as practised by most of us, does at least show plants growing in real time (albeit with an army of staff and volunteers and a huge budget) and would be a better return for the expense...but show gardens, assembled for a few days at vast expense, are an insult to what most of us understand by gardening.